Chris Bohjalian

“And just as there is random horror-murder,suicide,child abuse,car accidents.......there is also indiscriminate kindness.Not merely miracles,though I have experienced them.But simple human connection,either brokered by an angel or sourced by one.That is why I try to encourage people to be receptive to that new person who seems to have appeared in their life out of nowhere.”

“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.”

“I need complete silence when I write.”

“If you look at my personal library, you will notice that it ranges from Henry James to Steig Larsson, from Margaret Atwood to Max Hastings. There's Jane Austen and Tom Perrotta and volumes of letters from Civil War privates. It's pretty eclectic.”

“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.”

“There is a lot of my childhood in 'The Sandcastle Girls.'”

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

“She didn't care so much whether the world would ever forgive her people; but she did hope that someday, somehow, she would be able to forgive herself.”

“During the war, I promised the dead I would never forget them. I stared at them, barely able to move myself. Pretended I was one of them. To this day I can recall the light in the ruins.”

“With age comes acumen. With experience comes insight.”

“The reality is that most of North America knows next to nothing of the 20th century's first genocide - the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the First World War.”