Quotes from Jeanine Cummins

How monumental Lydia's grief had been when her father died! It terrifies her now, to think of it, how deeply formative that single loss was in her earlier life. Now there are sixteen more. When she thinks of this, she feels as tatty as a scrap of lace, defined not so much by what she's made of, but more by the shapes of what's missing.

Pero no te preocupes, mi reina del alma—tu sufrimiento será breve.

it wasn't the body but the way he animated it that had thrilled her.

La cafeína le llega al torrente sanguíneo como un sueño de otra vida.

The man's words have landed on her face and she does – she looks like an Aztec warrior.

she has a new understanding about the futility of worry. 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.

that life was exciting, that there was always the possibility of something, or someone, previously undiscovered.

beauty begets empathy

TODA MI FAMILIA ESTÁ MUERTA POR MI CULPA

If I don't look in the mirror, I can go around thinking I'm gorgeous when I'm not.

She fights at every moment against the scream that pulses inside her like a living thing.

Lydia tries her best not to consider the many words that will never come out of her mouth now, the sudden monster void of words she will never get to say.

this is the one thing all migrants have in common, this is the solidarity that exists among them, though they all come from different places and different circumstances, some urban, some rural, some middle-class, some poor, some well educated, some illiterate, Salvadoran, Honduran, Guatemalan, Mexican, Indian, each of them carries some story of suffering on top of that train and into el norte beyond.

The absolute absence of him feels like unmitigated terror.

migra. When has she ever

come from, that this is the better option. That these people would leave their homes, their cultures, their families, even their languages, and venture into tremendous peril, risking their very lives, all for the chance to get to the dream of some faraway country that doesn't even want them.

There's a tug-of-war in his heart already, between wanting to remember and needing to forget. In the months to come, Luca will sometimes wish he hadn't squandered these early days of his grief. He'll wish he'd let it pierce and demolish him more. Because, as the forgetting part takes anchor and stays, it will feel like a treachery.

perímetro. Lydia move o corpo na direção dessa

Esti o persoana, un adult, ii zisese inainte sa se logodeasca. Si eu sunt iubitul tau. Daca ne casatorim, asta inseamna ca ma alegi pe mine. Si sper sa continui sa ma alegi in fiecare zi.

He mispronounces the word hombres in the style of the US president who, attempting to call migrants bad men, inadvertently referred to them as bad hunger instead. It's a joke now, full of irony. Bad hunger. El comandante toes the line.

The unsolved-crime rate in Mexico is well north of 90 percent. The costumed existence of la policía provides the necessary counterillusion to the fact of the cartel's actual impunity.

defined not so much by what she's made of, but more by the shapes of what's missing

spectacular. The chugging of the engine and the squeal