“Czechs simply dont say theyre going camping or spending time outdoors. They say, in Czech, that they are going into the nature as though nature, proda, is beyond a place in the woods or other forms...”

“A wave of saudade swept over me as I realized home never existed at all. The concept of home felt far from my reach, and I felt sick with longing.”

“Adversity has the remarkable ability of introducing the real you to yourself.”

“The most insidious of our country, the greediest and highest rung of our socioeconomic ladder, line their pockets with misappropriated funds as military personnel and hordes of civilians are maimed...”

“There are people who come home from war and want to talk about the pain, but no one wants to listen; there are others who want to keep silent and repress the memories, and all their family and frie...”

“I left a piece of my soul that will always rightfully belong in the desert.”

“Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.”

“My request today is simple. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. Find somebody, anybody, thats different than you. Somebody that has made you feel ill-will or even hateful. Somebody whose life decisions hav...”

“Dont we get it? To put our arm around someone who is gay, someone who has an addiction, somebody who lives a different lifestyle, someone who is not what we think they should be doing that has noth...”

“And if we never visit Paris, that's okay. Your heart is my exotic destination every day.”

“The meal she served was unlike any I had encountered in Vienna, or anywhere else: red seaweed garnished with pickled radishes; black rice noodles and spotted mushrooms boiled in wine, grilled squid...”

“One might trouble one's dainty snout with a whiff of the taleggio displayed in an artisanal cheese shop, or take a saucer of jasmine tea and a knuckle of fennel-scented snuff at a counter of buffed...”

“FICTION is a series of unintended coincidence,confabulation,and quasi-lucid lying made plausible enough for an author and a reader to cohabitate for a secret, brief and sinful affair. Nothing is re...”