He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all.

You can still be cool when you’re dead. In fact, it’s much easier, because you aren’t getting old and fat and losing your hair.

Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you.

The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances.

…she smiles in an exhausted but warm sort of way, as though she is a brilliant sun in some other galaxy

Mama said, "Dreams are different to real life but important too."

Now I wonder if it means that the future is a place, or like a place, that I could go to; that is go to in some way other than just getting older.