Quotes from Chris Bohjalian

I think the most important lesson isn't necessarily to try and write a different book every time, or to try and brand yourself and write one specific kind of book, but to write the kind of books you love to read.

People seem to read so much more nonfiction than fiction, and so it always gives me great pleasure to introduce a friend or family member to a novel I believe they'll cherish but might not otherwise have thought to pick up and read.

Food is a gift and should be treated reverentially--romanced and ritualized and seasoned with memory.

We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.

But history does matter. There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Bosnians and the Rwandans. There are obviously more, but, really, how much genocide can one sentence handle?

I have lived with magic and without magic, and I can tell you with certainty that a life with magic is better....

When it seems you have nothing at all to live for, death is not especially frightening.

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.

He recalls what that first German soldier said to his major: No God-not yours or mine-approves of what you're doing.

And though some days it is very hard, I try not to live for the future. And I try not to dream of the past.

Life is filled with small moments that seem prosaic until one has the distance to look back and see the chain of large moments they unleashed.

My mother used to talk about passages and, once in a while, about ordeals. We all have them; we are all shaped by them. She thought the key was to find the healing in the hurt.

But history does matter. There are lines connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Serbs and the Rwandans. They are obviously morbid. Really, how much genocide can one sentence handle? You get the point. Besides, my grandparents' story deserves to be told, regardless of their nationalities.

With age comes acumen. With experience comes insight.

No one said living isn't a pretty chancy business, Sibyl. No one gets out of here alive.

I don't know, maybe I just wanted to be alone. Maybe I just didn't want to be social because antisocial people have a whole lot less to lose.

Remember that person you wanted to be? There's still time.

Boys look at us like we look at horses: color, height, eyes. tail. They can't help but have preferences.

He defined himself almost wholly in the negative: It was not who he was, it was who he was not.

And when something wasn't working, you changed it. Breakdowns lead to breakthroughs.

The honest answer is more complex. On some level I was sent. Or inspired. Or called. But my calling, such as it was, wasn't a single booming invitation from above (really, is it ever?)...

Now it is you who everyone presumes is so fragile. Wounded. Scarred. Maybe they're right. Perhaps you are. A nursery rhyme comes into your head, and, like an egg, you allow yourself to topple onto your side, your legs still pulled hard against your torso. You lie like that a long while, watching the chrome shell of the tape measure sparkle until the sun moves.

Dead … might not be quiet at all.

Then there were those girls who became midwives: girls who could not get enough of the tiniest of babies - girls who would grow into women who absolutely reveled in the magnificent process of birth...The difference between a woman who becomes an OB and the women who becomes and midwife has less to do with education, philosophy or upbringing than with the depth of her appreciation for the miracle of labor and for life in its moment of emergence.