This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world.

The music of Gavin Bryars falls under no category. It is mongrel, full of sensuality and wit and is deeply moving. He is one of the few composers who can put slapstick and primal emotion alongside each other. He allows you to witness new wonders in the sounds around you by approaching them from a completely new angle. With a third ear maybe.

It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.

I want the marginality to come into the center. This is the thing I was conscious of growing up, when I later lived in England. I saw all these war movies that came out shortly after the war, and they were all about the war being fought by Englishmen or Americans, there were no other "allies" in it - from India or Australia, etc.

The one of the great sadnesses of any life is knowing what you know now and then remembering what you did not know then.

The last three books are much more a case of a moment of history, what happened almost by accident or coincidence, like being in the same elevator or lifeboat.

This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world.