It would be wonderful to have a guru; it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received.

It's through the small things that we develop our moral imagination, so that we can understand the sufferings of others.

I just focus on getting the first scene right, with a few lines about the overall plot, and then the book grows organically.

I am capable of being idle.

Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner..., things of that sort, our personal memories, that make the private tapestry of our lives.

But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?

Every small wrong, every minor act of cruelty, every act of petty bullying was symbolic of a greater wrong. And if we ignored these small things, then did it not blunt our outrage over the larger wrongs?