There’s a disconnect between how people imagine their families and how families are in real life. - Laila Lalami

(What moves you most in a work of literature?) I’m moved by voices that ring so true that they make me feel kinship with characters who are completely different from me. As I get older, I also find myself moved by depictions of friendship and kindness, which are so much harder to execute convincingly on the page than cruelty or betrayal.

Somehow I had also convinced myself that my redemption could only come from some force outside of me-that if I were useful to others, they would save me. What a terrible thing to believe. I had to stop playing a part in my own misery. I had to save my own life. (p129)

I think of history as a dialogue with the present, so whenever I’m puzzled by the turn of current events — which is all too often these days — I look to the past for context.