My mother always says that fear and pain are immediate, and that, when they're gone we're left with the concept, but not the true memory.

death should be celebrated...when you put something in the ground you always know where it is

Come on, is your heart a sponge or a fist?

A family has its own rituals and its own superstitions.

I grew up in Cyprus and Egypt, these fantastic places I remember fondly.

No matter how grave the secret, how imperative absolute silence, someone would always feel the urge to confess, and an unleashed secret is a terrible force.

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.