“Because we looked away in the past, does that mean we can look away now?Page 76”

“When we came to America, though, we didn't know what the right thing was. Here we lived with no map. We became invisible, the people who swam in between other people's lives, bussing dishes, delivering groceries. What was wrong?We didn't know. The most important thing, Abba said, was not to stick out. Don't let them see you. But I think it hurt him, to hide so much.”

“Maybe that's what living in America does to you: it spreads you into far distances until you're just little bits rolling apart.”

“If I say a word that is angry, he explained, then I should never be surprised by the harm. And if I say something good, then it is like watching my own garden grow, and that is the greatest pleasure ever.”

“However much you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest. We are all wolves of the dense forest of Eternity.”

“What is this gypsy passion for separation, thisreadiness to rush off when we've just met?My head rests in my hands as Irealize, looking into the nightthat no one turning over our letters hasyet understood how completely andhow deeply faithless we are, which isto say: how true we are to ourselves.”

“Clary knew what made the parents around her cry, more or less openly: that everything must grow and change and--rather than being set free--must die, all these children too. We die, they will die, their children will be dead. We resist mourning, because we know we will have to mourn soon enough, and the resistance makes us weep.”