“It's just that you reach a point where metaphors become indistinguishable from the things they represent. And the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. And it feels like being born”

“There are many different parts to ourselves, and to become a woman of knowledge, you must know all the parts. There is a part of you that is actually just your vitality, your life force. Get to know the part of yourself that is just being or just a quality of living in your life force . . .And as there is a part of you likes to just be, there is a part of you that likes to do things. Perhaps the part of you that is always accomplishing things has taken over the part that just likes to relax in silence, maybe even to the point where the part of you that likes to just "be" is overshadowed. Is that possible?”

“But what's all this about not being able to die, live, be born? That must have some bearing. All this about staying where you are, dying, living, being born, unable to go forwards or back, not knowing where you came from, or where you are, or where you're going, or that it's possible to be elsewhere, to be otherwise? Supposing nothing, asking yourself nothing? You can't, you're there.”

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”

“It is a long journey, not just as a writer, but as a human being. Take nothing and no one for granted, be humble always, be kind especially when it's difficult and never forget the place where you came from and the people that helped you get where you are. These things will live on in you and through you, long after the words have faded.”

“...it's just as bad to live in a place where what you do see isn't there as it is to live in one where what you don't see is.”