“One thing I know from living with Jack is that war, any war, stains a man deep, and nothing can get the stain out. They can wear clothes like a rancher or a banker, but the stains are under there, never far from the surface of their skin.”

“Blood spilled by violence leaves a stain far different from blood which is shed any other way.”

“A mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any waters.”

“I never see the sick;” Yasmin says. “They visit me through the stains and marks they leave on the sheets, the alphabet of the sick and the dying … Sometimes the stains are rusty and old and sometimes the blood smells sharp as rain. You’d think, given the blood we see, that there’s a great war going on out in the world. Just the one inside of bodies, the new girl says.”

“People went through life like well handled jugs, collecting chips and scrapes and stains from wear and tear, from holding and pouring life.”

“If I were deaf, I’d wear loud clothing. My clothes would also be covered in coffee stains, because Helen Keller is my hero.”