And it was always the stories that needed the telling that gave us the rope we could cross any river with. They balanced us high above any crevasse. They made us be natural acrobats. They made us brave. They met us well. They changed us. It was in their nature to.

There are things that can't be said, because it's hard to have to know them.

We'd never expect to understand a piece of music on one listen, but we tend to believe we've read a book after reading it just once.

The head has its confines. The head’s got those all right, and the heart. The heart has its reasons.

Fashion is fickle, and I was published because I was fashionable. Because I was gay.

Tonight I can smell the season the way it's usually only possible to at the very first moments of its return, before you're used to it, when you've forgotten its smell, then there it is back in the air and the flow of things shifting and resettling again.

All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.