Inez da Souza Quotes

″‘Don’t be sillier than you were born,’ said Inez with patient scorn. ‘Enoque and Honorio are garimpeiros. They’re gold-miners. It’s all they know about. They don’t have a brain between them to do anything else.’ ‘Then they’re mining for gold!’

″‘Couldn’t Great-Grandma have used the names again, once the children were dead?’ asked Inez, being practical. ‘And how would brother and sister be told apart in Heaven, may I ask? And the bad luck! Consider the bad luck!‘”

“But even Inez could not discount the obvious. Enoque and Honorio were digging for gold outside the shop.”

“Gold. A funny thing, really, for the world to place such value on, thought Inez vaguely. Something lying about in the ground. Why not something hard to come by? Something men had to climb up high for...”

“Inez thought [the Baby] must be searching for a name, since Mrs. da Souza would not give it one. Mrs. da Souza considered it a waste to name a child before knowing whether it would survive.”