In every person's face, there is one place that seems to express them most accurately. With my grandmother, you always looked at her mouth.

Love ruined people's lives, the way our parents said drugs could.

Once upon a time, my mother lived in the posh downtown of Homs, Syria. She described my grandfather as a king in a storybook, atop a horse, wearing a didashah and pointing a long arm.

Casebook is my attempt at a love story. I had a vision of a difficult love.

Everybody in America grew up without a father even if they had one. It was the fifties. They were working.

Writers collect stories of rituals: John Cheever putting on a jacket and tie to go down to the basement, where he kept a desk near the boiler room. Keats buttoning up his clean white shirt to write in, after work.

We come into the world whole, all of us, but we don't know that, don't know that life will be taking large chunks out of us, forever.