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

No shame in saying that I felt a loneliness drifting through me. Funny how it was, everyone perched in their own little world with the deep need to talk, each person with their own tale, beginning in some strange middle point, then trying so hard to tell it all, to have it all make sense, logical and final.

The point of flight. To get rid of oneself. That was reason enough to fly.

I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.

People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.

Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years

It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.