She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.

I grew up sort of middle class, safe and suburban.

She's always thought that one of the beauties of New York is that you can be from anywhere and within moments of landing its yours.

We stumble on, thinks Jaslyn, bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves. It is almost enough.

Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years

It is not fashionable anymore, I suppose, to have a regard for one's mother in the way my brother and I had then, in the mid-1950s, when the noise outside the window was mostly wind and sea chime.

Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be.