"Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always." (p. 7).

"It pained Miriam to picture Rasheed panic-stricken and helpless, pacing the banks of the lake and pleading with it to spit his son back onto dry land. And she felt for the first time a kinship with her husband. She told herself that they would make good companions after all." (p. 85).

"When Miriam thought of this baby, her heart swelled inside of her. It swelled and swelled until all the loss, all the grief, all the loneliness and self-abasement of her life washed away." (p. 89).

"Miriam remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world...As a reminder of how women like us suffer, she'd said. How quietly we endure what falls upon us." (91).

"The era of aristocracy, nepotism, and inequality...