[Alicia, with Miguel] "I do what I can to be faithful to Christ's admonition to love God and to love my neighbour. Nothing else matters." "To love Go… - Michael Nava

[John] "You don't stop loving your kids because they fuck up," he said. "You love them more."

"War is destruction and destruction is easy," Madero said.

Since then, however, his city had disintegrated around him, shattered buildings and the glassy-eyed dead transforming familiar landscapes into a circle of hell. He had felt the fear of the adults whom he had once believed were impervious to fear and invincible in their certainties. The world had taught him there are no certainties and ultimately no safety. Terrible things happened without warning or explanation. He blinked back his tears. He was not yet a man, at least not like his father or Tió Damian, but he could no longer be a child. He felt the world's enmity and he responded not with a child's grief but a man's defiance, as if his blood were being infiltrated with threads of iron.