All my life, I'd been around men. That night, I discovered the tenderness of a woman.

I give novels as gifts, and there is nothing I like to receive more as a gift.

I will follow you to the ends of the world.

It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.

I wished I could be alone in my room, with my books, away from these people.

Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

It would be erroneous to say Sohrab was quiet. Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. Sohrab's silence wasn't the self imposed silence of those with convictions, of protesters who seek to speak their cause by not speaking at all. It was the silence of one who has taken cover in a dark place, curled up all the edges and tucked them under.