How can you smile as though your whole life hasn't capsized

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.

Between the kitchen and the destroyed chapel a door led into an oval-shaped library. The space inside seemed safe except for a large hole at portrait level in the far wall, caused by mortar-shell attack on the villa two months earlier. The rest of the room had adapted itself to this wound, accepting the habits of weather, evening stars, the sound of birds.

How we are almost nothing. We think, in our youth, we are the centre of the universe, but we simply respond, go this way or that by accident, survive or improve by the luck of the draw, with little choice or determination on our part.

I kind of was shoveled onto a boat at 11 and went to England. I didn't have any parent watching over me. It was very free and may have been a bit of a scary time for me, but I really don't remember much about the voyage apart from playing ping-pong a lot with a couple friends.

Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again

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.