Abra DeMadrigal didn't look young enough to be my sister anymore. Her sorrow weighed her down and aged her. She was still beautiful, but she looked very far away. No wonder our people had raven eyes, so distant, so sad. No matter how wise she was, my mother looked like a woman who hadn't truely believed how much evil there was in our world. Not until this moment.

The adults don't know what's happening on the kids' universe and the kids don't know what's happening on the adults' universe

Weapons are kept from women, but such a naming suggests that perhaps men fear our talents in war as well as our desire for peace.

He was in love, and people in that condition did stupid, unfathomable things. They were all flawed, every single one.

I thought of the bowl of water my mother taught me to look into. It was true, everything a person ever needed to know was right there in a single bowl small enough to fit in the palm of one hand.

The best way to die is when your living

I didn’t want to be prideful anymore. I wanted to be as hard as and brittle as the stones I carted into the woods. Stones that could not feel or cry or see. I wished not to feel anything at all. In no time, what I wished for, I became.