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.

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.

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.

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

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.

When entering a library, I never forget to bow down!

Patriotism is racism for the modern era.

Fly and you will catch the swallow.

Examples of vicious courses practiced in a domestic circle corrupt more readily and more deeply when we behold them in persons in authority.

It is easier to build a boy than to mend a man.

Too much attention on problems kills our faith in possibilities.

An aching tooth is better out than in. To lose a rotting member is a gain.

In America there is a channel called TruTV which is just reruns of 'Cops' and 'World's Dumbest Criminals'. I could watch that the entire day.

It is my belief that people who speak of high school with a sugary fondness are bluffing away early-onset Alzheimer's.

War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. ... To move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war.