Jephthah called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, 'Let me cross over,' the men of Gilead asked him, 'Are you an Ephraimite?' If he replied, 'No,' they said, 'All right, say Shibboleth.' If he said, 'Sibboleth,' because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Fourty-thousand were killed at the time.

They say behind mountains are more mountains.

There is something human about the way people react to and identify with suffering. There's a lot more empathy in the world than we perhaps realize.

To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.

The best moment in writing any book is when you just can't wait to get back to the writing, when you can't wait to re-enter that fictional place, when your fictional town feels even more real than the town where you actually live.

When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity.

No one will love you more than you love your pain.