I have sat in the dark and looked at them both, the child and the woman. And the feeling has become too much. It is not sorrow or joy; it is the weight and the pressure of having been brought into their lives, and of knowing that if one were ever to be separated from them, it would mean your obliteration.

He boils milk with fresh ginger, a quarter of a vanilla bean, and tea that is so dark and fine-leaved that it looks like black dust. He strains it and puts cane sugar in both our cups. There's something euphorically invigorating and yet filling about it. It tastes the way I imagine the Far East must taste.

Grief is a gift, something you have to earn.

The problem with anger against God is that it's impossible to go higher in the system to complain.

Never do I close my door behind me without being conscious that I am carrying out an act of charity towards myself.

There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language.

She was transparent, like a watercolor. As if she were about to dissolve in sound, in tones not yet created.