One hand, five homes. A lifetime in a fist.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

I dream of writing a book like LOVERS some day. It is so spare but so rich. It is history made intimate, and a masterpiece of compression.

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.

War will bring the revolution; revolution will stop the war.

I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories.

She watched his lips forming the words, at the same time she heard them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.