"In the last photograph of her, the bullet wound looked like a cheerful summer rose arranged just above her left ear. A few petals had fallen on her kaffan, the white shroud she was wrapped in before she was laid to rest."

"State-sanctioned marriage is a civil contract, period. A contract is not a judgment of moral value. It is a legal agreement between two parties that testifies to a meeting of minds between those consenting entities. It is not a religious act or rite and so has nothing to do with Adam and Eve or Steve or even Harvey."

"People left a lot of things behind when they went in the water. Their clothes, their stuff, their makeup, their fixed-up hair, their voices, their hearing, their sight—at least as the normally experienced them."

"Earth is not a private club; it is a universal club. Being born allows you to receive a membership card; you don’t have to do anything else for it. And it is the most beautiful club that you will ever find. Once you have realized that you are a member, don’t you want to keep it clean and comfortable for fellow members to use?” I know I do."

"Grab every chance given and do not throw it away; always cherish what you already have, for you never know when you will receive something of its likeness again; and if you lose what was most precious to you, never stop fighting for it until you have it once again in your possession."

"I elbow my way through the mass of people to get to my locker because there's something immensely satisfying about the toughest part of my arm connecting with the softest part of everyone else."

"He wished he could have roots spreading under every inch of his lost soil, his beloved lost home, that he could have been part of something, that he could have been himself, walking down the road not taken, living a life in context and not the migrant's hollow journey that had been his fate."