Flights: Nobel Prize and Booker Prize Winner

They weren’t real travelers: they left in order to return. And they were relieved when they got back, with a sense of having fulfilled an obligation.

That life is not for me. Clearly I did not inherit whatever gene it is that makes it so that when you linger in a place you start to put down roots. I’ve tried, a number of times, but my roots have always been shallow; the littlest breeze could always blow me right over. I don’t know how to germinate, I’m simply not in possession of that vegetable

My set of symptoms revolves around my being drawn to all things spoiled, flawed, defective, broken.

we began to understand that if it weren’t for rationalization, sublimation, denial—all the little tricks we let ourselves perform—if instead we simply saw the world as it was, with nothing to protect us, honestly and courageously, it would break our hearts. What we learned at university was that we are made up of defenses, of shields and armor, tha

And there is that other assumption, which is terribly dangerous—that we are constant, and that our reactions can be predicted.