This naming of things is so crucial to possession - a spiritual padlock with the key thrown irretrievably away - that it is a murder, an erasing, and it is not surprising that when people have felt themselves prey to it (conquest), among their first acts of liberation is to change their names.

The history of race relations in America is very different than something like the Holocaust.

Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds.

When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself.

Habit gives endurance, and fatigue is the best night cap.

The shadow of my mother danced around the room to a tune that my own shadow sang.

The sound of words in a novel is a pretty amazing thing, and I am concerned with the sound of every word I write.