How can I expect readers to know who I am if I do not tell them about my family, my friends, the relationships in my life? Who am I if not where I fit in the world, where I fit in the lives of the people dear to me?

By remaining constrained in one's environment or country or family, one has little chance of being other than the original prescription. By leaving, one gains a perspective, a distance of both space and time, which is essential for writing about family or home, in any case.

It is a choice I’ve made, yet it is also a choice made with few other options available.

I also understand that you have to lie to yourself to survive in a bad marriage, you have to delude yourself if you want to carry on in this life.

We rarely consider that we're also formed by the decisions we didn't make, by events that could have happened but didn't, or by our lack of choices, for that matter.

I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.

Forgetting is as integral to memory as death is to life.

I couldn't tell the truth if my life depended on it.