Life must pass through difficulty in order to achieve any modicum of beauty.

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

We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

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.

Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.

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.

He said to me once that most of the time people use the word love as just another way to show off they're hungry. The way he said it went something like: Glorify their appetites.