This post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it.

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.

Success is only possible to those whose hearts are willing and ready to embrace hard work

Asking for blessings, receiving blessings, becoming a blessing, becoming a source of blessings

There’s no hope for someone who doesn’t even know what hope is

I never work just to work. It's some combination of laziness and self-respect.

If you don't have an assistant, you are one!

Europe's the mayonnaise all right, but America supplies the good old lobster.

Actors should never give interviews.

Then come out," said the king, helping him, "knowing you'll never die of a fall unless the god himself drops you.

There are no greater adversaries than yin and yang, because nothing in Heaven or on Earth escapes them. But it is not yin and yang that do this, it is your heart that makes it so.