The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.

The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.

Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.

Even if you're going to die, you might as well die pretty.

She takes another long haul, lets the smoke settle in her lungs-- she has heard somewhere that cigarettes are good for grief. One long drag and you forget how to cry. The body too busy dealing with the poison.

I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book

Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years