“We come from the land, give our love and labor to her, and she nurtures us in return. When we die, we return to the land. In a way, she owns us. Palestine owns us and we belong to her”

“Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme.”

“love is what we are about, my darling," she says. "Not even in death has our love faded, for I live in your veins.”

“I know she is crying. Her tears fall on the wrong side, into the bottomless well inside her.”

“Amal,I believe that most Americans do not love as we do. It is not for any inherent deficiency or superiority in them. They live in the safe, shallow, parts that rarely push human emotions into the depths where we dwell.”

“The land and everything on it can be taken away, but no one can take away your knowledge or the degrees you earn”

“She bore an uncanny resemblance to my mother, but the same beauty bloomed differently in each of them. My mother's fairness was exquisite and untouchable, roaming alone in an abandoned castle. Khalto Bahiyas' beauty took you in immediately. Hers was easy and disclosed hordes of laughter stolen from wherever it could be found. Gravity, sun, and time has scrawled on their faces the travails of hard work, childbirth, and destitution.”