No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.

I have a writer's memory, which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.

What is a secret wish?" "It is what you want but cannot ask.

Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.

A mother is always the beggining. She is how things begin.

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.

The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.