We shape ourselves by our imaginative reach.

Sometimes, in life, nothing happens. But, sometimes, nothing happens beautifully.

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.

One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.

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

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.