Looking a dead insect in the sack of basmati that had come all the way from Dehra Dun, he almost wept with sorrow and marvel at its journey, which was tenderness for his own journey. In India almost nobody would be able to afford this rice, and you had to travel around the world to be able to eat such things where they were cheap enough that you could gobble them down without being rich; and when you got home to the place where they grew, you couldn't afford them anymore.

Slowly, painstakingly, like ants, men would make their paths and civilization and their wars once again, only to have it wash away again.

Jemu watched his father disappear. He didn't throw the coconut and he didn't cry. Never again would he know love for another human being that wasn't adulterated by another, contradictory emotion.

When you write on your own, you can write the extremes. No one else is watching and you can really go as far as you need to.

Sadness was so claustrophobic.

When I was growing up the publishing world seemed so far away. When my mother wrote a book, she would look up the address of publishers on the backs of the books she owned and send off her manuscript.

I love Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor. I read a lot of American writers.