I usually write away from home, in coffee shops, on trains, on planes, in friends’ houses. I like places where there’s stuff going on that you can lift your eyes, see something interesting, overhear a conversation.

Why didn't he say goodbye? I gave myself a bruise. Why didn't he say 'I love you'?

This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern.

....Worthy would-be worlds of words, whorls of working wonder.

Every night before putting her to sleep, Yankel counts her ribs, as if one might have disappeared in the course of the day and become the seed and soil for some new companion to steal her away from him.

It was getting hard to keep all the things I didn't know inside me.

People around the world were moving from one place to another. No one was staying.