“I sit up in bed slowly, feeling the disappointment trickle away like puddles after a rain shower.”

“But the ground shakes, as if something's trying to push up from below, and I think of other people's mothers shaking out their duvets or even God shaking out the fabric of space-time.”

“Homeopaths argue that water has a memory.”

“But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.”

“I feel like crying. There's something so sad about broken concrete.”

“Real life is physical. Give me books instead. Give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of a book. . . . an intertextual being: a bo...”

“A few blossoms float into the room. They drop like frayed yellow ribbons on the gray carpet.”

“Gula and Cali lie on their sides, their tiny adder-mouths showing the pink of their palates, their bodies throbbing with lustful and obscene dreams. The sky releases its burden of sun and color. Ey...”

“... there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his grasp again.”

“The foods that are nearby are best for human beings, and things that he has to struggle to obtain turn out to be the least beneficial of all.”

“They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say 'Shit, it's raining!”

“Halfway home, the sky goes from dark gray to almost black and a loud thunder snap accompanies the first few raindrops that fall. Heavy, warm, big drops, they drench me in seconds, like an overturne...”

“For the rest of my life, Zanzibar will be the Swahili word for rain. The rain would drizzle, spit, mist, downpour, shower, torrent, gust, deluge and blast. At one point it hit the ground so hard it...”