“As much as Sajida once loved him, she thought it unjust that her daughter, forsaken by her father, should have any physical likeness to him at all.”

“He thought how much he liked her and had in common with her, and how much she'd like and have in common with him if she only knew him.”

“Take care of him, her father had charged her. She had thought - until he wakes. But she began to see what her father had trusted to her, and how very much Sasha needed someone he could trust-Someone as brave as her father, someone not afraid of him - no matter what.”

“She used her heart to love him, not her head, not her words and not her thoughts or ideas or feelings or any other vehicle or object or device people use to deliver love or love-like things. She used her heart, as a physical transmitter of love, and what came out of it was no more voluntary than gravity or time or time travel or the laws of fictional science itself.”

“Adults were always quick to tell her how much she looked like her mother, and how little like her father. Though Anna thought that on the inside she was much more like him. There was this strong, unbreakable will in her to fight for something, somwhere. But where? for what? and against whom?”

“Noor was Sajida's secret. She knew the exact moment her child was conceived. Purple passed slowly, the lowest of clouds, over her eyes. Bathed in such magnificent color, Sajida lay perfectly still. Much later, she would try to relive the exact moment, as if she needed to understand how the fact of her child could have entered her body and mind at the same time. But Sajida would not summon the gentle shade ever again.”