*"Then suddenly, through the noise of the people talking, I heard Papa singing. He was sitting on a bench, singing as if he were alone in the wilderness."—Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
*"In the tarpaper barracks a thousand or so people lived, but outside, everything was green and wild. The hills rolled gently over themselves—soft, brown, and rounded, they looked as if they had never been touched. The sage, thick and aromatic, covered the slopes."—Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
*"But the desert didn't care that we were sad or afraid; to the desert we were only part of the dust."—Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
*"Papa, a Buddhist and always fatalistic about the things he couldn't change, believed if we accepted our fate, if we did our best, someday the good life would return to us."—Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
*"I wanted so badly to understand the secret, this key that would help us escape, this way to regain what we had lost."—Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
