What is literature, really? Boiled down to a single sentence, I'd say it's this: an endless conversation about what it means to be human. And to read literature is to engage in that conversation.

The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.

I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.

I walked down my snow covered street. Out of habit I turned and checked for my footsteps. When I arrived at my building I looked for my name on the buzzers. And because I know that sometimes I see things that aren't there, after dinner I called Information to ask if I was listed.(25)

For me, the most powerful way to write about something is through the absence of it. Rather than writing about what it was to become a new mother, I wrote, for example, a father facing death and addressing his estranged son about the regrets of his relationship.

The accolades, just like the scrapes and bruises, fade in the end, and all you're left with is your ambition.