I had the look of a Westerner fresh off the boat, with my wrinkled trousers, tourist backpack, and it didn’t tally with my fluency in Kinyarwanda.

When they chucked me out in the middle of the goddamn winter, you gave me your coat and seven euros.

For weeks, Ma didn’t feel a shred of warmth for the baby.

The world appeared in stages with each rung of the ladder I climbed.

As they drew nearer, knives in hand, Hilaire recognized the feverish eyes behind their scarves.

“We toppled Lenin!” exclaimed Firman after a dramatic pause.

I’ll speak up, I’ll be fearless, and I swear to never back down until I have prevailed against the powerful trying to lock up the weak in a dark hole.

It’s because all we’ve been talking about these evenings are the old legends, and that’s what brought the fox here.

They stuffed these intoxicating little spheres into their mouths and kissed the juice off of the palms of their hands.

I knew I was born here and I would die here.

San feels reassured that Namae’s body is as skinny and pathetic as her own.

They may even throw us out of this village.

Tempo, for instance: one drop every so often, always the exact same so often, like a time trial in a bicycle race.

A headband, you say? You’re ridiculous.

Having a kid is the same as enrolling in a lifetime plan of suffering.

Eight years and I’m still not over it.

Completely unaware that this was the kind of sacred moment when you pledge your undying allegiance to a team, through thick and thin, I stated my choice.

On a bad night, a train car on the red line takes more than half an hour to appear, and no fewer than twenty-one minutes to traverse the eleven stations to the southern tip of Manhattan.

His lips are moist, as though he were stewing on more insults.

All she can think about is why it ever occurred to her to dress like this in public.

He checked Mel’s Instagram and Twitter accounts again, waiting anxiously for her to post something, anything.

It should be patently obvious to anyone but the most resolutely blind that he is not aching with impatience to go to the house of the Lord.

JB was the one to start that fire inside my head.

“When you go in search of food, you must do so at night, and you must only go with your head and intestines.”

At eighty-six years old, Éliane had to stand up and confront her own private nightmare.

She tapped the photo and said, “When I am dead, this is the photo of me I want you to keep.”

Whatever you do in Turkey, you do it alone.

Pretty much everyone knew Saw Ai’s family had problems.

Who would smile like that after such a thing?

Why couldn’t Mama just leave Father?

On this terrible morning, everything is relentless.

In your opinion, why'd he do it?

It's your skin I feel sliding beneath my soapy palms.

The rhythmic flow of Shadow Heights was something she often missed and longed for while she was in Joburg.

My departure had nothing to do with you or your brother.

From that day on, her memories of Danchen were frozen.

I'm not like you, Pak.

“The central server is under attack and receiving commands to self-destruct.”

Listen, all of you, to what will later be said of the Forsaken by one of their descendants.

Their nayffara is a flutelike instrument heavy with history, deeply immersed in sorrow.

Depleted as they were, they realized that they had to either team up or go under.

What you are witnessing is the last face of the Earth.

Karen says she’s seen it when the souls begin their perambulations.

This last shift, the boats came in all night and we ran out of everything.

That same month, she realizes that she’s never going to stop striving as long as she’s in Reykjavik.

When Böddi came back to Iceland a month later, he was engaged.

He gets irritated, even seems hurt, if I put on makeup, and he asks accusingly, “Who are you doing that for?”

i come from a family built on longing.

Even though I hate her, my mother probably wrote me letters that she never sent.

So began many long months of conversation between Alberte and his horse.

“I don’t know where to start.”

He can run from this business but he can’t hide.

The troika was the Holy Trinity of its time.

People get killed for less nowadays . . .

You’ve got to act fast in this city.

Driving here, did you know you'd die today?

I am the same sort of export as a Kalashnikov rifle or our great suicidal writers.

It wasn’t a plane at all, but a car flying through the sky.

At that moment, there was another whistling sound, followed by a huge explosion.

She could not have known that the caller at the other end of the phone was about to faint.