She'd have to propel herself into the future by whatever means possible or she'd be trapped forever in a place whose times had already passed.

This way of leaving your family for work had condemned them over several generations to have their hearts always in other places, their minds thinking about people elsewhere; they could never be in a single existence at one time. How wonderful it was going to be to have things otherwise.

Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss?

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 he died, I went about like a ragged crow telling strangers, "My father died, my father died." My indiscretion embarrassed me, but I could not help it. Without my father on his Delhi rooftop, why was I here? Without him there, why should I go back? Without that ache between us, what was I made of?

All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.

The publishing world is very timid. Readers are much braver.