[My maternal grandmother ] was a teacher in London and elsewhere during the war, although the children she taught were not the "lost children" who feature in the novel - those come from my research.

My whole life is my work.

A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.

Nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles.

I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.

Even for a girl like me, then, there comes a day when she can stop surviving and start living. To survive, you have to look good or talk good. But to end your story well-- here is the truth-- you have to talk yourself out of it.