In the desert the most loved waters, like a lover's name, are carried blue in your hands, enter your throat. One swallows absence.

It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's beyond in the darkness, beyond where you're writing.

There was a time when mapmakers named the places they travelled through with the names of lovers rather than their own.

We keep wanting to save those who are forlorn in this world. It’s a male habit.

Every immigrant family, it seems, has someone who does not belong in the new country they have come to. It feels like permanent exile to that one brother or wife who cannot stand a silent fate in Boston or London or Melbourne. I’ve met many who remain haunted by the persistent ghost of an earlier place.

It's an odd state to be in, blowing the whistle on your home country.

A novel is a mirror walking down a road