It's stupid. There are maps to show you how to get to the place where you want to be but no maps that show you how to get to the time when you want to be.

The short story that eventually grew into Constellation was the first fiction set in Russia that I'd ever written, and that was right around the time I was giving up on a doomed, never-to-be-seen first novel. While I saw it could be something bigger, in hindsight fortuitous timing was as responsible as anything.

There is something miraculous in the way the years wash away your evidence, first you, then your friends and family, then the descendants who remember your face, until you aren’t even a memory, you’re only carbon, no greater than your atoms, and time will divide them as well.

She wouldn't climb out of the bed for her sister, but she had climbed into a crater. She wouldn't cross a room, but she had crossed a continent.

She wanted to hold foreign syllables like mints on her tongue until they dissolved into fluency.

Perhaps our deepest love is already inscribed within us, so its object doesn't create a new word but instead allows us to read the one written.

For their entire lives, even before they met you, your mother and father held their love for you inside their hearts like an acorn holds an oak tree.