“Our hearts may have broken in Nebraska but in Colorado they split open along the fractures, crumble to pieces, blow away. The peaks and green valleys, the lakes set at the foot of mountains like offerings. Beautiful and doomed and thus terrible.”

“Is a one foot by one foot piece of cloth a blanket? What about if you rotate it all over your body throughout the night like it was Colorado and you were the continental US?”

“I love Colorado. The mountains are so passionate. They just make me want to run to the top and yell obscene things to the valleys below." ~ Ardith”

“Esperanza leaned around the side of the truck. As they rounded a curve, it appeared as if the mountains pulled away from each other, like a curtain opening on stage, revealing the San Joaquin Valley beyond. Flat and spacious, it spread out like a blanket of patchwork fields. Esperanza could see no end to the plots of yellow, brown, and shades of green. The road finally leveled out on the valley floor, and she gazed back at the mountains from where they'd come. They looked like monstrous lions' paws resting at the edge of ridge. ”

“Now her eyes meet mine like green lightning-they are green, these eyes of hers, whose power is so indescribable-green, but as are precious stones, or deep unfathomable mountain lakes.”

“Many paths lead from the foot of the mountain, but at the peak we all gaze at the single bright moon.”