Daughter of Genoa Quotes

“At first it was strange to look at him when he didn’t often look directly at me, but as we grew easier with one another, I found myself watching him. I noticed how, at idle moments, his fingers went to the rosary at his waist—not fiddling with it, as I first thought, but methodically pressing each bead. He was praying when he did that, just as he was praying when he closed his eyes for a moment before picking up his pen, or stopped work to listen to the bells of the Immacolata. He was praying all the time.”
― Kat Devereaux, Daughter of Genoa

“He turns the map around so that it faces Vittorio. And there is Genoa, spread out before him: that thin, staggered strip of a city wedged in between the mountains and the sea. The line of the seafront is changed now, fretted and eroded by repeated bombing. Churches, palaces, theatres and monuments lie in ruins, but here on the map they survive as neat little symbols. And scattered around this now-imagined city are the people he looks after—the people he loves, with that fierce but dispassionate love that surpasses all sentimental attachment.”
― Kat Devereaux, Daughter of Genoa

“Your survival alone is a gift. It defies every foul act, every vile intention. Don’t underestimate it, I beg you.”
― Kat Devereaux, Daughter of Genoa

“I couldn’t stop looking at the ration card, turning it over in my hands. After a year and a half of begging and bargaining for whatever scraps of food I could get, simply to have one was miracle enough. But its strange perfection set my mind racing. I felt sure that if I brought it to my nose, I’d smell fresh ink and warm paper: the same smell that drifted up from the shop downstairs.”
― Kat Devereaux, Daughter of Genoa

“You have to understand that I have nobody waiting or even hoping for me. I’m alone, and that changes everything.” I had not consciously chosen the words, but as I said them, I knew that they were true. “All I have here and now, Father Vittorio, is myself. I still have my free will, so why shouldn’t I use it?”
― Kat Devereaux, Daughter of Genoa