You have so much to offer, she was often told, as if she had a tray of cigarettes and candy perpetually strapped to her waist.

Fighting for peace, is like f***ing for chastity

If people were like rain, I was like drizzle and she was a hurricane.

I asked her if she believed you could ever truly understand another culture. I told her the longer I stayed, the more asinine the attempt seemed, and that what I’d become more interested in is how we believed we could be objective in any way at all, we who each came in with our own personal definitions of kindness, strength, masculinity, femininity, God, civilisation, right and wrong.

You don’t realise how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense.

She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself. With him, she was at ease: her skin felt as though it was her right size.