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

What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves.

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.

I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you.

When we are young we do not look into mirrors. It is when we are old, concerned with our name, our legend, what our lives will mean to the future. We become vain with the names we own, our claims to have been the first eyes, the strongest army, the cleverest merchant. It is when he is old that Narcissus wants a graven image of himself.

There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.

The past is still, for us, a place that is not safely settled.