60 Quotes by Zita Steele

Carlos was a plain, ordinary and overlooked man who—throughout his entire life—was maltreated by others because of his thick Spanish accent and the color of his skin. He didn’t have money, power or fame. He did have one thing, and that was love. For that reason, Carlos’s memory has lasted a very long time in the hearts and minds of people who knew him, who still think of and speak of him with affection and admiration.

The Perea family is of Arabic origin. The surname Perea originates from the Arabic word “Bariya” and denotes a homeland now located in modern-day Jordan. This surname was phonetically changed in Spanish to “Perea,” which commonly happened with Arabic words absorbed into Spanish—including the word “Albuquerque,” the capital city of New Mexico, which derives from Arabic.

The surname Fletcher belonged to my maternal grandfather and was one that he held very proudly. It is the name I legally adopted as my own surname at age 15. Fletcher is an English surname meaning “arrow maker” that was given to medieval craftsmen who designed and crafted arrows.

At this place in time, neither of them were foreign to each other. They were just two humans alone in the middle of the sky. The differences between them now were immaterial, like the faint whisper of traffic far below.

Luis found all this very exciting. He had enthusiasm for myths, legends, bad omens, bad weather, supernatural happenings and inexplicable events. His passion for superstitions and doomsaying drove his other family members crazy. He didn’t often meet curious strangers with whom he could share his fantastic tales.

He was a scoundrel and a saint and a survivor. A tangled Celtic knot of thorns and roses. Ragged and sincere. It moved her deeply. Like a forgotten melody that suddenly struck a vibrant chord inside her heart. He was almost irresistible.

His deadpan expression turned bitter with a curl of his lip. “Save your sermon for some other sap. Nobody shares money—not even dead people. Why do you think they invented wills and trust funds?

A lone Japanese man stood on the sidewalk a short distance away. Sleek, self-possessed, dressed in gray. Emma’s lover. Moon’s prime suspect. The man who had once been Dr. Toshi Okada—maimed, supposedly dead, come back alive for revenge.

He attained the highest mastery of Korean martial arts—he could hurl himself through the air and crack cement blocks with his bare hands. In knife-fighting drills, he developed a thousand different reflexes to disarm and stab people. He learned to shoot all manner of firearms…Justin Moon had become the ideal South Korean soldier—with stony strength, quickness, and above all, endurance.