When one was reinventing oneself, anywhere could be home. Pull up your shallow roots and move. Find a new place, new friends, a new family. It had been possible once, it would be possible again.

When one was reinventing oneself, anywhere could be home.

The tradition that refuses to entertain doubt, or remains impervious to new thoughts and ideas, becomes a prison rather than a sustaining life force.

I hate the word ‘simple’. Nobody has any business to live in the world and know nothing about its ways.

Marry me, love me, above all, look after me. somebody had to be responsible for her, besides herself. That was what women had been led to expect and hardly any price was too high. Loneliness, heartache, denial, all grist to the mill.

As immigrants fly across oceans they shed their old clothing because clothes maketh the man and new ones help ease the transition. Men’s clothing has less international variations; the change is not so drastic. But those women who are not used to wearing western clothes find themselves in a dilemma. If they focus on integration, convenience and conformity they have to sacrifice habit, style and self-perception.

Anchors. You had to be your own anchor. By now there was no escaping this knowledge. Still she had been trained to look for them and despite all that had happened, she had not got over the habit.

The world would be a better place if...

I am almost six-novels-old. It took me until the third novel to call myself a writer.

There was no aphrodisiac more powerful than talking, no seduction more effective than curiosity.