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

We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. If we have sons, we don't mind knowing about our sons' girlfriends, but our daughters' boyfriends? God forbid. But of course when the time is right, we expect those girls to bring back the perfect man to be their husband.

Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing.

Death would be a complete knowingness, but what frightened him was this: not knowing beforehand what it was he would know.

My grandfather died in the war, my family went through the war, and it affected my parents in really profound ways. I've always wanted to write about that period - in some ways to digest it for myself, something that defined me but that I didn't go through.

Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.

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.