“The women in your family have never lost touch with one another. Death is a path we take to meet on the other side.”

“Old age is not meant to be survived alone,” Man Rapadou said, her voice trailing with her own hidden thoughts. “Death should come gently, slowly, like a man’s hand approaching your body. There can be joy in impatience if there is time to find the joy.”

“People are just too hopeful, and sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us. People will believe anything.”

“No, women like you don’t write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness.”