“She had read about people-where? she could not remember this either- who refused to name their children for several weeks, feeling them to not be yet of the earth, suspeded still between two worlds.”

“Norah looked at her son’s tiny face, surprised, as always, by his name. he had not grown into it yet, he still wore it like a wrist band, something that might easily slip off and disappear. She had read about people – where? she could not remember this either – who refused to name their children for several weeks, feeling them to be not yet of the earth, suspended still between two worlds.”

“she seemed not to worry very much about ghings, but rather to accept the world as a fascinating and unusual place where anything might happenmemory keepers daugher”

“So something had begun, and now she could not stop it. Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement. She could leave this place today. She could start a new life somewhere else.”

“Each letter has a shape, she told them, one shape in the world and no other, and it is your responsibility to make it perfect.”

“Around me the beautiful windows, connecting me to other lives and other times, to things done and also deliberately left undone, stood dark. Rose, I was sure, had acted out of love, yet for Iris her mother's absence had remained an unresolved sadness at the center of her life. I thought of what Rose had written about anger, about its power to corrupt, to make a space for evil. Maybe she was right. Maybe evil, that old-fashioned word, could be called other things, disharmony or dysfunction. Maybe Rose was right and evil wasn't attached top an individual as much as if was a force in the world, a seeing force, one that worked like a self-replicating virus, seeking to entangle, to ensnare, to undo beauty. [p.353]”

“Then she had been a fiancee, a young wife, and a mother, and she had discovered that these words were far too small ever to contain the experience.”