I felt suddenly cruel, like I´d told dmall children there was no tooth fairy, that it was just their Mom sneaking into their room after they went to bed.

Do you ever want to go home?' I asked Paul. He brushed an ash from my face. 'It's the century of the displaced person,' he said. 'You can never go home.

Let me tell you a few things about regret. There is no end to it. Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself?

She kissed me on the mouth. Her mouth tasted like iced coffee and cardamom, and I was overwhelmed by the taste, her hot skin and the smell of unwashed hair. I was confused, but not unwilling. I would have let her do anything to me.

The pearls weren't really white, they were a warm oyster beige, with little knots in between so if they broke, you only lost one. I wished my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn't come apart.

I'm always gratified when I check something I've made up and discover that I've gotten it right. How can we imagine something that turns out to be true? How can we know things we couldn't possibly know? It makes me wonder about the existence of a collective unconscious.

I usually start with something that has some energy, like a compressed character or a situation that's wound up like a spring. Then all I have to do is let it go, let its energy carry the story. And that may not turn out to be the beginning of the book.