The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.

As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts and the Two Thoughts he thought were these: a) Anything can happen to anyone. and b) It is best to be prepared.

Memory was that woman on the train. Insane in the way she sifted through dark things in a closet and emerged with the most unlikely ones - a fleeting look, a feeling. The smell of smoke. A windscreen wiper. A mother's marble eyes. Quite sane in the way she left huge tracts of darkness veiled. Unremembered.

When she looked at him now, she couldn't help thinking that the man he had become bore so little resemblance to the boy he had been. His smile was the only piece of baggage he had carried with him from boyhood into manhood.

I do believe that fundamental to any real hope is that we do need to reconstitute what has been generally handed out as the recipe for "happiness" for the human race, and what has generally been decided counts as "progress." People arrive at a different understanding of happiness, however fragile it is. They find it in unexpected ways, in the most unexpected of places.

The American way of life is not sustainable. It doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.

I don't think the state will allow people to occupy a particular space unless it feels that allowing that will end up in a kind of complacency, and the effectiveness and urgency of the protest will be lost.