...her cry is a hook and it catches me in the throat.

Children make prayers so thoughtlessly, building them up like sand castles—and they are always surprised when suddenly the castle becomes real, and the iron gate grinds shut.

He tried to reconstruct the story in his mind, but it kept getting confused, bleeding into itself like watercolors.

In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach.

I have tried to write stories that go into the underworld of myth and bring out life and fire — where the old world looked at a woman alone and immortal and said: she must long to die, I have tried to say: look at her live!

It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.

I hope, in years to come, I shall hold my heart up and it will be a pane of clear glass, through which I see all, but nothing is distorted.