'My mother once told me my father didn't really know where he was from,' I said. 'And I don't think he did. He used to go to his room and lay down for hours in the dark; I think he must have been thinking about where he was from when he did that. All he really knew was that he was part English and part African. And a little bit Irish too.'
'Nobody is part anything, Fitzgerald,' Roderick said. 'The sea is part salt but that doesn't stop it from being wholly the sea. Because a tree is part bark and part leaf is it any less a tree when its leaves fall off? No, it is still a tree. Is the sun any less the sun when part of it is hidden by a cloud?'