Laila remembered Mammy telling Babi once that she had married a man who had no convictions. Mammy didn't understand. She didn't understand that if she looked into a mirror, she would find the one unfailing conviction of his life looking right back at her.

Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.

When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color.

If you were the poor, suffering was your currency.

Soon, he would become an adult. And when he did, there would be not going back because adulthood was akin to what his father had once said about being a war hero: one you became one, you died one.

For a novelist, it's kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture.

hills that stand soft and a sky that stands high and blue, and the sun setting behind a windmill, and always, always, hazy strings of mountains that fall and fall away on the horizon.