- In India, women paint prayers on the ground outside their homes each morning. Daily events (people walking, the weather) ensure their disappearance in the evening.
- In the city the elements themselves were money: air was money, fire was money, water was money, the need of, the quest for, the greed for. Love was money. There was money or death.
- I discovered that you can refuse something and still it stays with you. /page8
- …people seldom realize that the line between public and personal is fine and frequently crossed, only if someone (someone like Elodie, for example) is paying attention. /page9
- …the way it did not try to be anything other than what it was. /page15
- The view (one of the few in the district) is truly breathtaking: water, bridges, city lights that resemble the fistfuls of glittering diamonds that a dragon and a little girl, in a children’s story, one tossed into a night sky. The lights are a necklace, a thousand fireflies, a fairy story with twelve dancing princesses. /page48
- Another thing they knew and shared and believed was that no one could really help anyone else, that sadness is solitude (this I believe!), but you could love someone, without reservation or fanfare, just love them without expecting anything in return and, sometimes, it would be enough (this I don’t!). /page60
- “I think that property should rightfully belong to whoever loves it,” said Ginny. “Is that like possession is nine-tenths of the law?” asked Selena. “No, it is when property possesses you.”
- But if you don’t own, you will move. Maybe not today or next year, but at some point.It makes notions of home and refuge seem useless and foolhardy. It makes you never want to get attached. And being unattached to one’s home can exhaust a person. /page67
- It wasn’t just being told no; it was the invitation to the loneliness of being different. A bit of physical perfection had always held Jelly apart from everyone she knew. She knew intimately the life of an anomaly; her area of expertise was the complexity of solitude. /page83
dec 2 2008 ∞
apr 12 2014 +