Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

We all - in the end - die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.

Everybody in America grew up without a father even if they had one. It was the fifties. They were working.

Often, I think, displaced people imagine themselves leading double lives. So a portion of my identity has always been privately siphoned into what would have been if I had stayed in Wisconsin.

Once upon a time, my mother lived in the posh downtown of Homs, Syria. She described my grandfather as a king in a storybook, atop a horse, wearing a didashah and pointing a long arm.

Reading-not occasionally, not only on vacation but everyday-gives me nourishment and enlarges my life in mysterious and essential ways.

So many things that seemed crucial and excruciatingly hard ended and then didn't matter anymore, forever after

We come into the world whole, all of us, but we don't know that, don't know that life will be taking large chunks out of us, forever.

The first person besides my mother who believed in me was a man whose last name I never knew. He was my boss, the manager of Swenson's Ice Cream shop.

Casebook is my attempt at a love story. I had a vision of a difficult love.

Whether you convert that diminishing life into something or you don’t convert it to anything is up to you. The life will keep on reducing and diminishing.

She’d been let down enough times to know not to believe in fairy tales.

Make food a very incidental part of your life by filling your life so full of meaningful things that you'll hardly have time to think about food.

I could go for a sandwich, but I’m not gonna open two jars.

What's it like to be on the other side of me?

If India is not to declare spiritual bankruptcy, religious instruction of its youth must be held to be at least as necessary as secular instruction.

If this be treason, make the most of it!

Luckily, I didn't get too beaten up before someone gave me a shot, but there were times when I was living on friends' couches and eating five-dollar subs from Subway almost every meal.

Models now need to promote themselves, think like businesswomen and diversify their careers by doing other things. Chances are very slim that a mere model will become a household name today.

The great thing about knowing you're wrong is the moment you realize it, you're right.