When you're given a brilliant child you polish her and let her shine. Pigs in Heaven

It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.

You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to run out of people to love.

Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past

No kind of bomb ever built will extinguish hatred.

the novel is inherently a political instrument, regardless of its subject. It invites you - more than invites you, induces you - to live inside another person's skin. It creates empathy. And that's the antidote to bigotry. The novel doesn't just tell you about another life, which is what a newspaper would do. It makes you live another life, inhabit another perspective. And that's very important.

That's how it is: some people are content to wait till you ask, while others jump right in with the whole story.