Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.

A thing that happens to migrants is that they lose many of the traditional things which root identity, which root the self.

Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.

A relationship with an imaginary woman is preferable to a relationship with a real one.

I don't think it is always necessary to take up the anti-colonial -- or is it post-colonial? -- cudgels against English. What seems to me to be happening is that those people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it -- assisted by the English language's enormous flexibility and size, they are carving out large territories for themselves within its frontiers.

Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul - what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?

Sometimes, people trying to commit suicide manage it in a manner that leaves them breathless with astonishment.