How we cite our quotes: ("Abbreviated chapter name," page)
Quote #4
"...Luz and Milagro are always alone with one another, speaking in symbols only they understand. Luz, older by twelve minutes, usually speaks for the two of them. The sisters are double stones of a single fruit, darker than their mother, with rounder features and their father's inky eyes." ("Palmas Street," 38)
Felicia's twins really have very little character development, since they exist merely to deliver information about life in their mother's house. But they do have this one defining trait: they are a closed circuit. Because of their mother's mental illness, the girls cling to each other even more than twins normally do, and for longer. They become suspicious of everyone outside their "double helix" and it's pretty clear that neither Celia nor Lourdes and Pilar will be likely to reach them.
Quote #5
"Painting is its own language, I wanted to tell him. Translations just confuse it, dilute it, like words going from Spanish to English. I envy my mother and her Spanish curses sometimes. They make my English collapse in a heap." ("Grove," 59)
Language very much defines a person's character and represents them in a certain way to the people around them. Pilar is caught between her adopted language and the language of her grandmother, which is no longer her own. It's no wonder that she defines herself through a non-verbal language medium like painting.
Quote #6
"[Lourdes] ponders the transmigrations from the southern latitudes, the millions moving north. What happens to their languages? The warm burial grounds they leave behind? What of their passions lying stiff and untranslated in their breasts?" ("Grove," 73)
Lourdes prides herself on having adapted so well to her new country and new language and can't understand how other exiles who resist such change can survive. Although she doesn't cry much for Cuba, she does wonder where the identities of immigrants go after they transform to meet the expectations of their new country.