As Jeremy Bentham had asked about animals well over two hundred years ago, the question was not whether they could reason or talk, but could they suffer? And yet, somehow, it seemed to take more imagination for humans to identify… — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share Image
I think the most important lesson isn't necessarily to try and write a different book every time, or to try and brand yourself and… — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share Image
The honest answer is more complex. On some level I was sent. Or inspired. Or called. But my calling, such as it was, wasn't… — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share Image
“A term came to her that they used on occasion at the shelter: the double bind...They used the expression in much the same way… — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share Image
“But history does matter. There are lines connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Serbs and the Rwandans. They are… — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share Image
What is most important to me is that my narrator's voice is believable, and that, though it is clearly an absolute fiction, it has… — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share Image
He defined himself almost wholly in the negative: It was not who he was, it was who he was not. — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share Image
“A moment later, all of the men at the party, stupefied by the way the hooker had gone banshee,” — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share Image
“Those who participate in a genocide as well as those who merely look away rarely volunteer much in the way of anecdote or observation.… — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share Image
“The Beatrice that obsessed Dante was a Florentine named Bice di Folco Portinari. Envision this moment (and, in all fairness, I am envisioning it the way Henry Holiday did in his exquisite nineteenth-century painting): Bice is walking beside the Arno River, dressed in white, the fabric clinging to her legs and outlining her slender thighs, and there is Dante. He… — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share
“Boys look at us like we look at horses: color, height, eyes. tail. They can't help but have preferences.” — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share Image
He recalls what that first German soldier said to his major: No God-not yours or mine-approves of what you're doing. — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share Image
“But she insists the family hadn’t a choice. Not true. We always have choices. Isn’t that what Dante teaches us? I really have become… — Chris Bohjalian Copy Share Image
