Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.
You don't have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.
You can feel bad... I mean, that's not illegal.
...They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.
No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.