"The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you are dead. To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate was is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget."

"D'you know what happens when you hurt people?" Ammu said. "When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."

A cold moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts landed lightly on Rahel's heart. Where its icy legs touched her, she got goosebumps. Six goosebumps on her careless heart.

A little less her Ammu loved her.

And so, out the gate, up the road, and to the left. The taxi stand. A hurt mother, an ex-nun, a hot child and a cold one. Six goosebumps and a moth.

"I was happy," Ammu said, and realized that she had been.

"If you're happy in a dream, Ammu, does that count?" Estha asked.

"Does what count?"

"The happiness - does it count?"

She knew exactly what he meant, her son with his spoiled puff.

Because the truth is, that only what counts counts.

"When I write, I never re-write a sentence because for me my thought and my writing are one thing. It's like breathing, I don't re-breathe a breath... Arranging the bones of the story took time, but it was never painful. Everything I have - my intellect, my experience, my feelings have been used. If someone doesn't like it, it is like saying they don't like my gall bladder. I can't do anything about it."