Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slep… - Jhumpa Lahiri

It was not in my nature to be an assertive person. I was used to looking to others for guidance, for influence, sometimes for the most basic cues of life. And yet writing stories is one of the most assertive things a person can do. Fiction is an act of willfulness, a deliberate effort to reconceive, to rearrange, to reconstitute nothing short of reality itself. Even among the most reluctant and doubtful of writers, this willfulness must emerge. Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying, “Listen to me.

She is stunned that in this town there are no sidewalks to speak of, no streetlights, no public transportation, no stores for miles at at a time.

And she refused to go to that miserable place he had dragged her to so many times, to hope for a thing that was unchangeable.