“It was the greatest learning summer of my whole life, but then came the fall, and I was told that I’d have to go back to school again. “NO WAY, JOSÉ!” I screamed, because I now knew that at school they were trying to “break” us, not “amanzar” us.”

“My classmates were spinning their fantasies for the future: lawyer, ethnobotanist, Buddhist monk (it was a very progressive high school). Even the dumb, uninteresting ones who were there to provide “balance” looked forward to their marriages and their children. I knew I wasn’t going to have any of this because I knew I didn’t want it. But did that mean I would have nothing? I was the first person in the history of the school not to go to college.”

“I’d always enjoyed life, and I knew I would again. But I was going to have to slog through a lot of bad patches to get there”

“I went to Sunday School and liked the stories about Christ and the Christmas star. They were beautiful. They made you warm and happy to think about. But I didn't believe them. The Sunday School teacher talked too much in the way our grade school teacher used to when she told us about George Washington. Pleasant, pretty stories, but not true.”

“As I walk back to the school on my own, I realise I'm crying. So I go back to the stories I've read about the five and I try to make sense of their lives because in making sense of theirs, I may understand mine.”

“I could not find my way back in dreams, I knew then. They were memory and desire, terror and hope; they told me only what I already knew.”

“I came back, Uncle Eddie. Last year, after the Henley, I could have gone to any school in the world -- I could have done anything, but I came back."

"You ran away, Katarina."
"And now I'm back."

"You're still running.”

“I close my eyes. And i scream. If my whole world is crashing down around me, then I am going to make the sound of the crashing. I want to scream until all my bones break.”

“For the first time I realize how perilous peace can be. I appreciate the tightrope that my grandfather has spent his whole life trying to walk. And now, more than ever, I grow terrified that I'm going to make us all fall down.”

“And besides, now that I’d finished high school, all I wanted to do was to stay on the ranch and work with our workers from Mexico. These were my people. This was where I belonged and felt at home.”