The military preferred - invariably - those who could be readily defined, assigned roles, understood, and controlled.

She had been a solitary child, and then solitary as a woman, drawn into an orbit of her own that took her away from others, even those who would be her friends.

We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.

Liu Fang is a truly gifted, world-famous player of the pipa and the guzheng, classical Chinese stringed instruments.

Some writers later, describing the events of that night and day, wrote that Wan'yen of the Altai had seen a spirit-dragon of the river and become afraid. Writers do that sort of thing. They like dragons in their tales.

There was some sadness in how that could happen, Tai thought: falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had? But if you didn't change at least a little, where were the passages of a life? Didn't learning, changing, sometimes mean letting go of what had once been seen as true?