“When we're alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it's as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us.”

“We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become.”

“Suddenly the clouds seem high above us. They’re moving over us in an arch, circling the planet. They have seen abysmal oceans and charred, scorched islands. They have seen how we destroyed the world. If I could see everything, as the clouds do, would I swirl around this remaining continent, still so full of color and life and seasons, wanting to protect it? Or would I just laugh at the futility of it all, and meander onward, down the earth’s sloping atmosphere?”

“His three wives are huddled together on the bare mattress, one of them dying; when we're together, we form an alliance he can't touch. He's scared to even try.”

“There are so many of us, so many girls. The world wants us for our wombs or our bodies, or it doesn't want us at all.”

“Love is not enough to keep any of us alive.”

“Hope, that risky, illustrious thing. It should have gone extinct by now, but we keep it alive.”