I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.

How far does a pretence of feeling, maintained with absolute conviction, become authentic?

There was a house we all had in common and it was called the past, even though we'd lived in different rooms.

The kind of power mothers have is enormous.

Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.

I know that whenever a group of women are gathered together, the grandmother always makes a phantom appearance, hovering above them.

Midnight, and the clock strikes. It is Christmas Day, the werewolves birthday, the door of the solstice still wide enough open to let them all slink through.