One time, when I was very little, I climbed a tree and ate these green, sour apples. My stomach swelled and became hard like a drum, it hurt a lot. Mother said that if I'd just waited for the apples to ripen, I wouldn't have become sick. So now, whenever I really want something, I try to remember what she said about the apples.

He is annoyed with their lack of interest, their blithe ignorance of the arbitrary genetic lottery that has granted them their privileged lives.

I have this almost pathological fear of boring the reader.

Educate yourself, learn about what refugees face when they don't have homes, after they have lost everything.

What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.

You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.

You don't order someone to polish your shoes one day and call them 'sister' the next.