Stories matter. Many stories matter.

I am drawn, as a reader, to detail-drenched stories about human lives affected as much by the internal as by the external, the kind of fiction that Jane Smiley nicely describes as 'first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don't fit, into their social worlds.'

This is our world, although the people who drew this map decided to put their own land on top of ours. There is no top or bottom, you see.

And it's wrong of you to think that love leaves room for nothing else. It's possible to love something and still condescend to it.

This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.

The only reason race matters is because of racism.

He was already looking at their relationship through the lens of the past tense. It puzzled her, the ability of romantic love to mutate, how quickly a loved one could become a stranger. Where did the love go? Perhaps real love was familial, somehow, linked to blood, since love for children did not die as romantic love did.