“We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.”

“I think," she began quietly, "I think we want... not just bread for our bellies. We want more than only bread. We want food for our hearts, our souls. We want- how to say it? We want, you know- Puccini music.... we want for our beautiful children some beauty." She leaned over and kissed the curl on her finger. "We want roses....”

“We wanted - no, we needed - to tell our stories, and more importantly, we needed our stories to be heard.”

“Our words always paint two portraits when we describe our families to others. Outsiders cannot but see the small peeves and follies that wrinkle our relationships with our loved ones. The claims we make in defensive certainty--that we were the one wronged, that we were the one who wanted the best--cannot but fall on skeptical ears since everyone makes the same claimsof virtue and innocence. We are always more than we want to be in the eyes of others simply because we are blind to the bulk of what we are. . . . Mimara had wanted him to see her as a victim, as a long-suffering penitent, more captive than daughter, and not as someone embittered and petulant, someone who often held others accountable for her inability to feel safe, to feel anything unpolluted by the perpetual pang of shame . . . And he loved her the more for it.”

“In the long run, our most deeply held desires will govern our choices, one by one and day by day, until our lives finally add up to what we have really wanted most--for good or otherwise. We can indeed have eternal life, if we really want it, so long as we don't want something else more.”

“We might not want to share our food or our money, but we do want to share our judgement. We want others to think we have more fun.But we need meeting-places of the mind. A Kilimanjaro of spirit that we've all visited so we can say of other things: it's shorter, or taller, or the same height as Kilimanjaro.”