Sourmelina's secret (as Aunt Zo put it): 'Lina was one of those women they named the island after.

Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that those two over-the-hill players, permanently on the disabled list, were once in the starting lineup? It's impossible to imagine my father, who in my experience was aroused mainly by the lowering of interest rates, suffering the acute, adolescent passions of the flesh.

The zipper opened all the way down our spines.

Her eyes watered and she was a foot taller than any of her sisters, mostly because of the length of her neck which would one day hang from the end of a rope

It was something every child knew how to do, maintain a direct and full connection with the world. Somehow you forgot about it as you grew up, and had to learn it again.

Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.

Some cities have fallen into ruin and some are built upon ruins but others contain their own ruins while still growing.