I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil.

A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing

She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things.

And yet she could not forgive herself. Even as an adult, she wished only that she could go back and change things: the ungainly things she’d worn, the insecurity she’d felt, all the innocent mistakes she made.

Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tranquility of the evenings. The promise that she would find things where she put them, that there would be no interruption, no surprise. It greeted her at the end of each day and lay still with her at night.