"I think it is very good that she has learned to read," I said. "It is her own freedom." (chapter 17 p118) - Edwidge Danticat

The nomad or immigrant who learns something rightly must always ponder travel and movement, just as the grief-stricken must inevitably ponder death.

They say the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. I have never been given very much. What was there to take away? ("Children of the Sea")

How do you even choose what to mend when so much has already been destroyed? How could she think, she asked herself, that she could revive or save anything? (p152)