❝ There’s a loneliness that only exists in one’s mind. The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

❝ Most novels these days don’t look farther than their front yards for their subject matter, or sometimes just the bottom of the protagonist’s shot glass; Nadine Gordimer, however, like her great Eastern European contemporary, Milan Kundera, sees history, power, and a gnawing desire for something secular, yet entwined in every mundane gesture.