20 Quotes by Anne Ostby

Suddenly it all made sense. You're supposed to share. And we just sit here with our belongings and our money, clinging to it, not sharing.

I think it might be a blessing not to have children," she says. "The fear of everything that could happen. The worrying about their future."I know exactly what she means, and complete her thought: "The disappointment over how they turned out.

You can't see the view now, in the dark, but you can hear it, right?"She can hear it. With her face turned toward the sea, Sina can hear Fiji welcoming her. A rush of sand against sand, a rhythm of water and moonlight and promises she can't decode. The breeze is warm against her clammy skin, a gust of something sweet and satisfied, a drop of honey on her tongue.

The one night a year when millions of balolo, tiny sea worms, come up from the deep and transform the surface of the sea into a billowing, undulating carpet. The small deep-water serpent that's lifted up by the full moon for one single, magical night to lay its eggs and sperm in a gelatinous soup- it's a gastronomic delicacy the people of Korototoka can't get enough of.

She's seen women on the street with flowers behind their ears, along the road, in stores, on their way home from the fields carrying baskets of cassava, the yellowish white root that's used in every meal. She's seen the red hibiscus, the bulging ginger blossom, the bewitchingly aromatic frangipani behind the ears of men too, but she wasn't aware of this secret code for courting.

She holds the acceptance letter in her hand; the sweet smell of the bird cherry tree wafts in through the open kitchen window. Her mother's apron is covered in black and purple flowers. Maya shuts her eyes, breathes in the spicy aroma of bird cherry blossoms.

Maybe Sina could plant some flowers? Ginger flowers and yellow allamanda. Bird-of-paradise flower. Delicate frangipani.

She's worked alongside him as they built their house on the vacant lot behind the sweet house and cultivated a small but fertile patch of cassava and sweet potatoes. Along the side wall of the house, a paradise of colors: tender pink hibiscus, fiery flamingo flowers, delicate purple orchids, and plump, juicy red protea.

The enthusiasm in his words, but most of all, this is what I saw: This is for me. He loves me. The sweet, heavy pleasure it takes months to cultivate, a long and laborious process: the love in the glistening fat brown cocoa bean. It's all for me.