“That, indeed, the Home Front is something of a fiction and lie, designed, not too subtly, to draw them apart, to subvert love in favor of work, abstraction, required pain, bitter death.”

“Fiction may be about lying – on the surface, anyway – but fiction is about hiding the truth behind those lies. It's about using those lies to say something true and real. It's about showing the reader something. It's about making them feel.And how we do that as authors is to put ourselves into our work, and make it mean something to us, so that it will mean something to the reader. That's what we should do. That's our job.”

“It's something about the inevitability. How nothing can keep them apart--not her selfishness, or his evil, or even death, in the end...their love is their only redeeming quality.”

“By the age of four one has experienced nearly everything one needs to be a writer of fiction; love, pain, loss, boredom, rage, guilt and fear of death.”

“Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work -- hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss -- loss of the certitudes, comforts, and hurts that shelter and define us.”

“There is too much pain in the world,in all shapes and forms.That is what these people represent.Pain from losing their homes,the death of a loved one,failing an exam,having a leg amputated,not getting a resident permit after years of hoping for a better life...That's what binds them,That's what they potray.Pain.”