“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

It is only when we dare to leave a place, a city, a memory that we realise in earnest what “home” really means, but if this is true, home is always bound to remain unattainable, unreturnable—motherland is a huge castle built on dunes, and when it collapses with the wind, it flows between our fingers like dry sand.

“The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”