i want to give up my bearings, slip out of who i am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin.

Her impulse, her need, to be the corrector of injustices, warden of the downtrodden flock. And

Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.

She would grab whatever she could -a look , a whisper , a moan - to salvage from perishing , to perserve. But time is most unforgivving of fires , and she couldn't , in the end , save it all .

J’aurais dû être plus gentille—I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that.

And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold.

And suddenly, just like that, hope became knowledge. I was going to win. It was just a matter of when.