“Zafar argues that the greatest influence on a writer may be on her psychic dispositions as a writer. Reading Philip Roth, writes Zafar, might clear the way of inhibitions that held you back from writing about reckless desire, the temptations of power, and the immanence of rage, or reading Naipaul might convince you to seize the ego that so wants to be loved, drag it outside, put it up against a wall, and shoot it.”

“Difficult questions can have simple answers.”

“I am too much of an imitator to be a true writer.”

“Is that not the Promethean fable, that the fire stolen from the gods will light men their way even while it burns their hands?”

“I wasn’t as untrusting. I had faith in the goodness of people, the perfection of love.What happened?Everything ends. And it’s how they end that leaves the lasting effect.”

“It is no consolation to reflect that every cause itself is an effect, making the search for causes and reasons a fool’s errand.”

“Our choices are made, our will flexed, in the teeth of events that overwhelm us and devour us.”

“At every stage, the world that breaks in through our senses struggles to find a footing in our brains. We might liken memories to the messages recorded on tape, but we mistake the message for the medium, or the other way round, for memory is the tape itself. When I listen to my memories now, I believe that all they tell me are the stories about themselves.”

“Then, as now, I believe that the English use language to hide what they mean.”

“When evil enters the world, do you think it comes with horns and cloven feet, billowing some foul stench?”

“That’s another argument for writing: making something that outlasts you.”