As an artist, you can never get what you want. What you do never approaches what you want it to be.

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.

How right that the body changed over time, becoming a gallery of scars, a canvas of experience, a testament to life and one's capacity to endure it.

But I knew one more thing. That people w ho denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger.

Your protagonist is your reader’s portal into the story. The more observant he or she can be, the more vivid will be the world you’re creating. They don’t have to be super-educated, they just have to be mentally active. Keep them looking, thinking, wondering, remembering.

How easy I was. Like a limpet I attached myself to anything, anyone who showed me the least attention.

Remember...we don't see objects, we see light. [...] Light can do anything water can do--flow, wash, trickle. It can do anything an artist can do--paint, burnish, carve. Candlelight falls, licks a face. There is always light in a room.