“She pressed the plunger down hard, in hope and without regret...Krystal Weedon had achieved her only ambition: she had joined her brother where nobody could part them.”

“Waking and sleeping she had demanded to know where she belonged in a white man's world, and how and where she should invest her ambition and her humanity”

“She had made her choice, and this was it, where she felt safe, in a world she could, for the most part, control. Page 328”

“Then the sluice gates opened and Lotte said it had been a long time since she saw her brother, that her son was in prison in Mexico, that her husband was dead, that she had never remarried, that necessity and desperation had driven her to learn Spanish, that she still had trouble with the language, that her mother had died and her brother probably didn’t even know it, that she planned to sell the shop, that she had read a book by her brother on the plane, that the shock had almost killed her, that as she crossed the desert all she could do was think of him.”

“Krystal flung herself violently off the chair, away from her mother. She was surprised to feel warm liquid flowing down her cheeks, and thought confusedly of blood, but it was tears, only tears, clear and shining on her fingertips when she wiped them away.”

“It was endlessly tricky being in the know. It was a state Carmen had a achieved with a certain bravado, but she found it difficult to maintain. Without Jones, she could easily slip out of the know, relapse into her natural eagerness, and probably never get hired for another part in her life.”