" Maybe the travel goes quicker on account of Lucy feeling a sorrow kin to love. Because though these dry yellow hills yielded nothing but pain and sweat and misplaced hope—she knows them. A part of her is buried in them, a part of her lost in them, a part of her found and born in them—so many parts belong to this land. An ache in her chest like the tug of a dowsing rod. Across the ocean the people will look like them, but they won’t know the shapes of these hills, or the soughing of grass, or the taste of muddy water—all these things that shape Lucy within as her eyes and nose shape her without. Maybe the travel goes quicker on account of Lucy mourning, already, the loss of this land. "

― C Pam Zhang , How Much of These Hills Is Gold