Snow Falling on Cedars

She had not been exactly cold to him, not exactly hateful, but he’d felt her distance anyway

The heart of any other, because it had a will, would remain forever mysterious.

he kissed his wife for a long time. Ishmael Chambers took a photograph of this; he watched their kiss through his viewfinder.

You playing detective?’ Art said. ‘You trying to be Sherlock Holmes? We got the mooring rope and that fishing gaff with Carl’s blood on it – those things speak for themselves, don’t they? What else does a body need?’

kissed him so softly it was like a whisper against his cheekbone. ‘Find someone to marry,’ she said to him. ‘Have children, Ishmael. Live.’

answered in English that was too precise, too perfect.

An enemy on an island is an enemy forever, he’d been fond of reminding his son.

If it looks like a dog and walks like a dog,’ Burke Latham asserted, ‘then most prob’ly it is a dog, that’s all there’s going to be to it.’

occurred to Ishmael for the first time in his life that such destruction could be beautiful.

And so the shape of Kabuo Miyamoto’s eyes, the country of his parents’ birth – these things must not influence your decision. You must sentence him simply as an American, equal in the eyes of our legal system to every other American. This is what you’ve been called here to do. This is what you must do.