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.

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.

I knew I would hate my best memory because it would prove that people could fake love or that love could end or worst of all, love was not powerful enough to change a life.

Reading-not occasionally, not only on vacation but everyday-gives me nourishment and enlarges my life in mysterious and essential ways.

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

Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.

We all - in the end - die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.