So the books for the Englishman, as he listened intently or not, had gaps of plot like sections of a road washed out by storms, missing incidents as if locusts had consumed a section of tapestry, as if plaster loosened by the bombing had fallen away from a mural at night.

I have to teach myself not to read too much into everything. It comes from too long having to read into hardly anything at all.

This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning.

Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet.

As someone who writes novels that are often set in other periods of time or other ages or other landscapes, there's a certain element of research I have to do, and often, the more laconic people are, the more interesting they become.

Kirpal's left hand swoops down and catches the dropped fork an inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter, a wrinkle at the edge of his eyes behind his spectacles.

We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.