If I write a character, instead of looking from the outside, like maybe a journalist would, trying to describe them physically and figuring out what kind of things they might be interested in or have in their house, I don't really do it that way. I try to feel what it would be like to be inside this person, to be them.

That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.

What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself.

They thought depression was like bieng 'depressed'. They thought it was like being in a bad mood, only worse. Therefore, they tried to get him to snap out of it.

Whenever we got a glimpse, their faces looked indecently revealed, as though we were used to seeing women in veils.

There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place.

You went out with a girl at first because the sheer sight of her made you weak in the knees. You fell in love and were desperate not to let her get away. And yet the more you thought about her, the less you knew who she was. The hope was that love transcended all differences. That was the hope.