The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)

Love the sick, each and every one, as if they were your own.

He’d wished for such words. He struggled to believe her because he was an expert in disappointment. The only protection was to anticipate it. Trying to hold on to the people you loved was the recipe for disappointment. Being angry with them was just as futile. He didn’t try to pretty his thoughts, speaking as honestly as he always had with her. “I

A man without a mustache is exposed and vulnerable, like an unbaptized child, the soul still in jeopardy.

It’s pointless chastising herself for not rescuing her mother sooner. Happened is happened, she thinks. The past is unreliable, and only the future is certain, and she must look to it with faith that the pattern will be revealed.

“Happened is happened,” our young bride will say when she becomes a grandmother, and when her granddaughter—her namesake—begs for a story about their ancestors.

You came into this world on an in breath. You will exit on an out breath.

What is worry but fear of what the future holds?

sometimes when you are most afraid, when you feel most helpless, that is when God is pointing out a path for you.”

arching her thumb back to exaggerate the shallow, triangular depression on the back of her hand between the two tendons that run from the thumb base to the wrist. Philipose is mesmerized by the elegance of that bowed digit resembling a swan’s neck, and by the fine, translucent hairs on her forearm.