“I had an ear for languages, and I could read before I could adequately wash myself. I probably could have vied with Jeanette for the number one spot, but I'd seen what happened if you gave in to your natural aptitudes. This wasn't like the woods, where you had to be your fastest and your strongest and your bravest self. Different sorts of calculations were required to survive at the home.”
“Remember me as the girl who married you, the woman who had your babies, who kept your house, weeded your garden, your soul mate and best friend. I was the woman who could make you laugh and cry. I could calm you when you were upset but yet infuriate you also like no other. For the passion and the love we shared, I thank-you. I could read your mind and finish your sentences. I knew everything you loved and hated and we had no secrets from one another. I knew what to say when you were upset to make things alright again. I felt your pain and I shared your joy. I embraced your strengths and celebrated your differences. I love you and everything about you and the physical limitations of worlds will not change that”. ”
“This isn't your fight, Patch," I said quietly.His eyes burned with an intensity I'd never seen before. "You're mine, Angel, and don't you forget it. Your fights are my fights. What if something had happened today? It was bad enough when I thought your ghost was haunting me; I don't think I could handle the real thing.”
“Fucker, I though to myself. So irritated by a stare!I wonder what your reaction would have been if you had lived under occupation for as many years as I had, or if your shopping rights, like all of your other rights, were violated day and night, or if the olive trees in your grandfather's orchards had been uprooted, or if your village had been bulldozed, or if your house had been demolished, or if your sister could not reach her school, or if your brother had been given three life sentences, or if your mother had given birth at a checkpoint, or if you had stood in a line for days in the hot August summers waiting for your work permit, or if you could not reach your beloved ones in Arab East Jerusalem....A stare, and you lose your mind!”
“I had to kill or be killed... It was the only way I could survive... But I never enjoyed it like YOU do. Yes, my EYE is different from yours... But never forget... I'm also human.”
“How could you begin?’ said she. ‘I can comprehend your going on when you had once made a beginning, but what could set you off in the first place?’ ‘I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which had laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”