The job of the writer is to look at where he is now and make some sort of emotional sense of it, not only for that moment but for years to come.

So much of her time spent like this: dreaming up things to say and never quite saying them.

Women get the short shrift in history. It's been largely written and dictated by men, or at least men believe that we own it, and women have really been in those quieter moments at the edge of history. But, really, they're the ones who are turning the cogs and the wheels and allowing things like the peace process to happen.

I write about what I know; and I write about things that are new to me, and that I didn't know before.

I don't know of a greater privilege than being allowed to tell a story, or to listen to a story. They're the only thing we have that can trump life itself.

There is always room for at least two truths.

The city was bigger than its buildings, bigger than its inhabitants too. It had its own nuances. It accepted whatever came its way, the crime and the violence and the little shocks of good that crawled out from underneath the everyday.