“Death is alive, they whispered. Death lives inside life, as bones dance within the body. Yesterday is within today. Yesterday never dies.”

“Tomas led a young woman by the hand and walked up into the foothills. Millian, the miner from Rosario, had introduced her to the patron, already buying points for himself. He was no fool. And the g...”

“Is it a crime to want to be good? she cried”

“I am in the earth and the earth is in me”

“They breathed. They felt their lungs fill the sky, and they let the dark clouds inside them flow out. Then they connected to the earth.”

“Life shifting, as life does”

“We've got to think now, in real terms, for that seventh generation . . . We've got to get back to spiritual law if we are to survive.”

“The two ideas, justice and vocation, are inseparable.... It is by way of the principle and practice of vocation that sanctity and reverence enter into the human economy. It was thus possible for tr...”

“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”

“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”

“Mineral cactai,quicksilver lizards in the adobe walls,the bird that punctures space,thirst, tedium, clouds of dust, impalpable epiphanies of wind.The pines taught me to talk to myself.In that garde...”

“A raging, glowering full moon had come up, was peering down over the side of the sky well above the patio.That was the last thing she saw as she leaned for a moment, inert with fatigue, against the...”

“It had grown darker now; it was full night already, with the swiftness of the mountainous latitudes. The square of sky over the patio was soft and dark as indigo velour, with magnificent stars like...”