There are things that you can’t do – like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.
When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.
Humbling was a nice word, Rahel thought. Humbling along without a care in the world.
If he touched her, he couldn’t talk to her, if he loved her he couldn’t leave, if he spoke he couldn’t listen, if he fought he couldn’t win.
One beach-colored. One brown. One Loved. One Loved a Little Less.
She viewed ethnic cleansing, famine and genocide as direct threats to her furniture.
Madness slunk in through a chink in History. It only took a moment.
Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons.
Humans are animals of habit.
The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead.
Here they learned to Wait. To Watch. To think thoughts and not voice them.
His gratitude widened his smile and bent his back.
Empathy may be the single most important quality that must be nurtured to give peace a fighting chance.
Fiction is the most joyous, beautiful, sophisticated, wonderful thing in the world.
He could do only one thing at a time. If he held her, he couldn’t kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn’t see her. If he saw her, he couldn’t feel her.
I think many people were surprised by the victory of the Congress, because it was really hard to see beyond the sort of haze of hatred that the Hindu nationalists had been spreading.
Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.
They looked at each other. They weren’t thinking anymore. The time for that had come and gone. Smashed smiles lay ahead of them. But that would be later. Lay Ter.
It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that is purloined.
All my books are accidental books – they come from reacting to things and thinking about things and engaging in a real way. They are not about, ‘Oh, did it get a good review in the Guardian?’ I don’t care.