Hanya Yanagihara

I think for a lot of people, friendship is a relationship that gets devalued once they move on to what people consider to be more important relationships: once you find a partner or when you have kids.

In a basic sense, 'A Little Life' is a homage to how my friends and I live our lives. I wanted to push past the definitions of how we typically define friendship. It's a different version of adulthood, but it's no less important and no less legitimate than anyone else's.

Friendship is one of our most treasured relationships, but it isn't codified and celebrated; it's never going to give you a party.

Kashmir, the 86,000-square-mile region in India's north, both is and isn't the India of the popular imagination.

I have never wanted a family. I don't believe in marriage, though I obviously believe it should be legal for everyone who wants to do it. But it is not something I believe in, nor do the characters in my book, nor do any of my friends.

Every traveler knows too well the endless quest for the perfect travel bag: the one that's stylish enough to carry through Paris, sturdy enough to tote around Peru, and - most important - doesn't make your shoulder sag even before you've loaded it up with everything you need for a day of sightseeing.

No religion makes more use of color than Hinduism, with its blue-skinned gods and peony-lipped goddesses, and even the spring festival of Holi is focused on color: Boys squirt arcs of dyed water on passersby or dump powder, all violently hued, on their marks.

He sits at the table and reads novels, old favorites of his, the words and plots and characters comforting and lived-in and unchanged.

He joined Jude in the kitchen and began making a salad, and JB slumped to the dining-room table and started flipping through a novel Jude had left there. "I read this," he called over to him. "Do you want to know what happens in the end?" "No, JB," said Jude. "I'm only halfway through.""The minister character dies after all.""JB!"After that, JB's mood seemed to improve.

Life itself is the axiom of the empty set. It begins in zero and ends in zero.

People who don't like math always accuse mathematicians of trying to make math complicated. (...) But anyone who does love math knows it's really the opposite: math rewards simplicity, and mathematicians value it above all else. So it's no surprise that Walter's favourite axiom was also the most simple in the realm of mathematics: the axiom of the empty set. The axiom of the empty set is the axiom of zero. it states that there must be a concept of nothingness, that there must be the concept of zero: zero value, zero items. Math assumes there's a concept of nothingness, but is it proven? No. But it must exist.And if we're being philosophical__hich we today are__e can say that life itself is the axiom of the empty set. It begins in zero and ends in zero. We know that both states exist, but we will not be conscious of either experience: they are states that are necessary parts of life, even as they cannot be experienced as life. We assume the concept of nothingness, but we cannot prove it. But it must exist. So I prefer to think that Walter has not died but has instead proven for himself the axiom of the empty set, that he has proven the concept of zero. I know nothing else would have made him happier. An elegant mind wants elegant endings, and Walter had the most elegant mind. So I wish him goodbye; I wish him the answer to the axiom he so loved.

He placed his hand on Willem's arm. 'Willem, don't cry.''I'm not going to,' he said. 'I can do other things in life besides cry, you know,' although he was no longer sure that was even true.

he tried to prepare himself for disappointment, even as he yearned to be proven wrong

In those hours he is awake and prowling through the building, he sometimes feels he is a demon who has disguised himself as a human, and only at night is it safe to shed the costume he must wear by daylight, and indulge his true nature.

. . .the particular way he had of structuring his paragraphs, beginning and ending each with a joke that wasn't really a joke, but an insult cloaked in a silken cape.

He has a vision of his life as a sliver of soap, worn and used and smoothed into a slender, blunt-edged arrow-head, a little more of it disintegrating with every day.

He would be a better person, he knows. He would be a more loving person.

I don__ really think of myself as gay, though,_ he began, and Kit rolled his eyes. __on__ be so naïve, Willem,_ he said. __nce you__e touched a dick, you__e gay.