“Would words shatter the immensity of life and death so close to one another?”

“We're all born with the greatest treasures we'll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart.”

“I watch life trickle from the bullet wound of a sixteen-year-old "example" and marvel how things weak, even words, will turn vicious and merciless to gain power,despite reason or history”

“Do you know, Mother, that Haj Salem was buried alive in his home? Does he tell you stories in heaven now? I wish I had had a chance to meet him. To see his toothless grin and touch his leathery skin. To beg him, as you did in your youth, for a story from our Palestine. He was over one hundred years old, Mother. To have lived so long, only to be crushed to death by a bulldozer. Is this what it means to be Palestinian?”

“Always" is a good word to believe in.”

“Death, in its certainty, is exacting its due respect and repose before it takes my hand.”

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