One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.

...and it strikes her, as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether.

She was forever tilted sideways by the notion that pain was inevitable, chance was cruel, and all human ingenuity should go towards the making of a good cup of tea.

I was fascinated by the lack of a word for a parent who has lost a child. We have no word in English. I thought for sure there'd be a word in Irish but there is none. And then I looked in several other languages and could not find one, until I found the word Sh'khol in Hebrew. I'm still not sure why so many languages don't have a word for this sort of bereavement, this shadowing.

She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse.

Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years

The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.