“Trying to remember, I have learned, is like trying to clutch a handful of fog. Trying to forget, like trying to hold back the monsoon.”

“Back at the hut, all my sister, they start to cry. "No crying," my aunt says, very strict. "You cry only in your mind."But later, when everyone else asleep, I hear my aunt, her tears, they fall like rain.”

“A man who doles out sweets, and slaps, with the same hand.”

“Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.”

“When I have run out of words to copy, I look out the window at this strange place called India. Inside the train, the people around me are snoring. I don't understand how they can close their eyes when there is so much to see.”

“In the evening, the brilliant yellow pumpkin blossoms will close, drunk on sunshine, while the milky white jasmine will open their slender throats and sip the chill Himalayan air.At night, low hearths will send up wispy curls of smoke fragrant with a dozen dinners, and darkness will clothe the land.Except on nights when the moon is full. On those nights, the hillside and the valley below are bathed in a magical white light, the glow of the perpetual snows that blanket the mountaintops. On those nights I lie restless in the sleeping loft, wondering what the world is like beyond my mountain home.”

“That first phrase-please bless me, Father, for I have sinned-was so humbling and so total, Matt always felt a kind of absolution as soon as he said it”