Being a teacher at a restaurant in the town where you lived was a little like being a TV star.

While it's true that some writers, when taking on love and war, find the task too big, or only succeed in one but not the other, Mengestu tracks both themes with authority and feeling.

Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.

You had only one chance for a signature in life, but most people left no impression.

The child who was happy with herself meant the parents had won the jackpot.

For me, a novel relying too heavily on a single idea might be a dry, deadly thing unless it possesses an animating force.

People like to warn you that by the time you reach the middle of your life, passion will begin to feel like a meal eaten long ago, which you remember with great tenderness.

After a certain age, you felt a need not to be alone. It grew stronger, like a radio frequency, until finally it was so powerful that you were forced to do something about it.

Wasn't the whole point of being an artist, or at least part of it, that you didn't have to wear a tie?

The generation that had information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but no longing.

But clearly life took people and shook them around until finally they were unrecognizable even to those who had once known them well. Still, there was power in once having known someone.

As a children’s minister, I always believed that I was an evangelist, and at the end of the book, there’s a simple prayer that, whoever’s reading the book could accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior

These dogs didn't bother to bond with us, but stuck out their paws, not to shake hands but so we could slit their wrists and get it the hell over with. (p.51)

My children are magical creatures and I love them to death.

Infatuated, half through conceit, half through love of my art, I achieve the impossible working as no one else ever works.

When action is needed, optimism, even of the mildly delusional variety, may be a good thing.

We're as much influenced by everybody else as they are by us, if they are. It's just all a part of the big thing.

Hey motor cycle mama, you gonna marry me?

To me, the idea and expectation that the day is slowly and surely coming when we will be able to honestly say we are our brother's keeper and not his oppressor is very beautiful .

Work can only be universal if it is rooted in a part of its creator which is most privately and particularly himself.