“You can write about your parents when they're gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you're going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home.”

The Ruin — where my friend Jorge Ruiz spent some of his nights — was decorated in twisted car parts and fruitless conversation and postindustrial clutter, in the collision of strangers and in the flicker of lost opportunities.

“Child, this ain’t no place for the likes of you.” That’s what Ophelia said to me this morning, when I showed her my new room. She comes every morning now to pick up the cartload of laundry

Father La Frambois was anxious to baptize me in the Missouri River, to change my name from Cuwignaka Duta, or Red Dress, to the holier appellation, Esther.

I was standing on the slick concrete floor of the barn hall, smoking a cigarette, waiting for Clement. It was four-thirty in the morning, and the dew on the roadside grass leading to the barn sparkled in the moonlight.

Ramani had been to Bandra that day, and he was talking about a bungalow on the seafront. It was one of those old three-storied houses with balconies that ran all the way around, set in the middle of a garden filled with palms and fish ponds.

When Erica took a leave of absence to complete her research she knew almost immediately that she would fail. She devised lists of people to telephone, penciled in a schedule of interviews and columns with questions. Her handwriting seemed small and bruised. She called no one.

What our grandmother keeps in her walk-in closet: pastel silks in pink and blue and peach, crepe de chine, chiffon, mousseline de soie, tulle, satin ribbons, boleros, corsets, hats with feathers, hats with cloth Rowers, cloches, a beaded cap, tunics, hobble skirts, gray wool suits, evening dresses and dressing gowns.

Wang Meng, one of China’s most influential post-revolutionary writers, came to international literary prominence after overcoming twenty years of internal exile in forced labor camps.

This guy, seemingly of mature years, in conservative duds . . . black wool pants, no pills; reversible corduroy jacket; cap, tucked under his arm; clean smell, of soap and coffee . . . he could be a cop