I need complete silence when I write.

The reality is that most of North America knows next to nothing of the 20th century's first genocide - the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the First World War.

She contemplated a mystery: How is it I am humiliated when I am alone? Does not humiliation demand an audience?

Elena believed that reportage like that might be compelling and beautiful, but it would never gain traction in the Age of the Troll. In the Age of Mass Shootings. In the Age of the Suicide Bomb in the Crowd.

It was Aldous Huxley who observed, “Every man’s memory is his private literature.

She knew that most men desired her because she was attractive and she was smart, but also because she was a drunk and she was easy. This one? She hoped for his sake he wasn’t as different as he seemed, because she always disappointed those men quickly or broke their hearts over time.

You can repair anything but dead. You can’t fix that. So you bury the dead an move on.

Sometimes I believe we would all be better off if we always treated people like this was the last time we were ever going to see them.

Remember that person you wanted to be? There’s still time.” She wanted to believe that; she wanted to believe it almost desperately. She wanted to be different from what she was – to be anything but what she was. But every day that grew less and less likely. Life, it seemed to her in the back of the cab, was nothing but a narrowing of opportunities. It was a funnel.

As a species, we’re either very resilient or super callous. I don’t know which.