“She did not think it was true that women fell in love all at once, but rather, that they fell in love through repitition, just the way someone became brave.”

“She had broken, become something else. She didn't know what yet. Could you love someone in the process of changing? She did love Linh. As much as a ghost loved. The mind treacherous.”

“Why did someone fall in love with you because you are one thing and then want you to be something else?”

“Helen's Saigon had always been about selling - chickens, information, or lovely young women, it didn't matter. It had once been called the Pearl of the Orient, but by people who had not been there in a very long time. Saigon had never been Paris, but now it was a garrison town, unlovely, a stinking refugee shantyville filled with the angry, the betrayed, the dispossessed, but she had made it her home, and she couldn't bear that soon she would have to leave.”

“Long ago she had become more ambitious than feeling. She had fallen in love with images instead of living things. Except for Linh.”

“[They] believed that the worst way to die, was far from home. That one’s soul traveled the earth, lost forever. But this place was as much her home as [California]. She had lived out some of the most important parts of her life here – and if that didn’t qualify a place as home, what did?”

“Sometimes you have to fulfill a promise in order to deserve the love you're given.”