The Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags.

.. becoming attached to a country involves pressing, uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens.

I tell Allah I love Him immensely, immensely. But I tell Him I cannot be better, because of how the world is.

Much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said.

But something he'd come to realize on the roof, leaning out, thinking about what would happen if he leaned too far, was that a boy's life could still matter to himself.

The forces of justice had finally come to Annawadi. That the beneficiaries were horses was a source of bemusement to Sunil and the road boys.

He wanted to go home to the place that he hated.

Though Abdul had been as afraid of ghosts as most Annawadi boys, these reports did not disturb him. Being terrorized by living people seemed to have diminished his fear of the dead.

No journey out of grief was straightforward. There would be good days and bad days. Today was just a bad day, a kink in the road, to be traversed and survived.

Her eyes flashed seven kinds of hell.

I'm trained as a teacher that's the only thing I've got a certificate for.

I don't consider myself Jewish. I am half-Jewish by race but not through my mother.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

We are immortal until our work on earth is done.

I don't want to be rich and I don't want to be famous.

Nature with her wonders blinds and binds one still. There is no escape. I love her utterly through all time and times. All over the world towns to me are prison; green fields are home.

Mothers sometimes are overly possessive, but not all children allow themselves to be possessed.

If you're to the point where you're trying to overcome that means you're at the point where you've admitted that you have a problem, and that might be your strongest point in the addiction.