“I am awestruck and I am happy to see that the book fair happens. I’ve learnt everything I know on the go, like my mother tongue.”

“My father was frightened of his mother. I was frightened of my father and I am damned well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me.”

“Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.”

“I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.”

“Whenever I go to the dock and look at the horizon, I am on the other side. If I see a boat on the ocean, it pulls me like a cord… like a belt pulling my sides, and I don’t know where I am, I cannot think of anything else…”

“Wisdom is knowing I am nothing,
Love is knowing I am everything,
and between the two my life moves.”

“What I am and what I know I owe to my father’s library and to my mother’s salon.”

“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I am going is what inspires me to travel it.”

“Deep in my psyche, I am no different than any American—I have a greater command of their language than they do. I am a composite of all of the heroines in the books I’ve read—legendary, mythological, fictional ones. I wonder if I am real? I want to be!”

“This book is dedicated to all of my friends who helped me get to where I am today - you know who you are…. and when I find you I am going to kill you.”