Quotes from Jeanine Cummins

That love is so vast I sometimes fear it," he said. "I can never hope to earn it, so I fear it will disappear, it will consume me. And at the same time, it's the only good thing I've ever done in my life.

In the morning, a local resident drapes a hose over the garden wall so the migrants can brush their teeth, wet their faces, and fill their canteens. A contingent of older ladies walks the tracks, passing out blessings with homemade bagged sandwiches and pickles. A guard from the hut calls Luca over and passes him a grape lollipop through the chain-link fence.

Everything about him changed when he talked about her—his voice, his face, his manner. His love for her was so earnest that he handled even the subject of her with tremendous care. Her name was like a fine glass bauble he was afraid of dropping.

Now and again when a book moved her, when a book opened a previously undiscovered window in her mind and forever altered her perception of the world, she would add it to those secret ranks. Once in

to shed the skin of her anguish and leave it behind her in the Mexican dirt. But the moment of the crossing has already passed, and she didn't even realize it had happened. She

All the way from Chiapas to Chihuahua, they cling to the tops of the cars. The train has earned the name La Bestia because that journey is a mission of terror in every way imaginable. Violence and kidnapping are endemic along the tracks, and apart from the criminal dangers, migrants are also maimed or killed every day when they fall from the tops of the trains. Only the poorest and most destitute of people attempt to travel this way.

makes a face that's like the opposite of rolling his eyes, where his features get really still, and he looks away from Lorenzo with his eyelids half-closed, and he just waits for the words to go away.

none of them had chosen to marry Sebastián, or to take on the risks of his profession as their own. Only she had done that, and now her family had paid for her choice.

If we get married, you choose me. I hope you'll continue to choose me every day.

He's like a small, human bellows, and she a fire that's dimmed to embers.

Rebeca leans her head against her sister's shoulder and watches the changing colors of the landscape. The sun sinks in front of them and turns the sandy earth orange and pink. The sky, too, is filled with crazy, vivid pinks and purples and blues and yellows, and the colors are slow to deepen, slow to slip into blackness, but when at last they are gone, the darkness is deeper and more vast than anything Luca has ever seen.

It's all a romantic dream now. It's over. I made my choices long ago, and this is where they've led me.

in the middle of her mothering years, that life was exciting, that there was always the possibility of something, or someone, previously undiscovered.

searches her gauzy memories, but it's no use. She can't remember why, and it doesn't matter anyway.

Every one of them, once or twice at least, every one of them despairs. The only thought that sustains them is the notion that each moment they endure this misery is one less moment they have yet to endure.

And then Luca leans close and whispers something in the coyote's ear. And the man reaches up and takes Luca in his arms, and Luca folds himself around the coyote's neck, and they embrace for a long moment, and then they turn away from each other quickly, and Luca ascends the steps. Lydia watches through the window as El Chacal lifts his pack from one of the lawn chairs, hoists his replenished water supplies, and heads back into the desert.

Javier reminded her, in the middle of her mothering years, that life was exciting, that there was always the possibility of something, or someone, previously undiscovered.

of lace, defined not so much by what she's made of, but more by the shapes of what's missing. She can't

They are manned by gangs or narcotraficantes or police (who may also be narcotraficantes) or soldiers (who may also be narcotraficantes) or, in recent years, by autodefensas—armed militias formed by the inhabitants of certain towns to protect their communities from cartels. And these autodefensas may also, of course, be narcotraficantes.

Marta's death changed everything, of course. It changed everything.

It's unsettling to see, emboldened by the veracity of black and white, the most deeply suppressed grapplings of your own smothered conscience, printed right there in the newspaper for all the world to read.

The worst will either happen or not happen, and there's no worry that will make a difference in either direction.

Es mi cielo, mi luna, y todas mis estrellas. My sky, my moon, and all my stars.

It's a luxury to slough the dust of the road off your skin, to soap up and stand beneath a spray of warm water, to watch it pool at your feet, grimy and brown, before it circles the drain and disappears forever.