The recounting of a life is a cheat...even our own stories are obscenely distorted.

A childhood is what anyone wants to remember of it. It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction.

This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.

These are frightening times...when she feels herself annointed by loneliness.

The larger loneliness of our lives evolves from our unwillingness to spend ourselves, stir ourselves. We are always damping down our inner weather, permitting ourselves the comforts of postponement, of rehearsals

And yet, within her anxiety, secured there like a gemstone, she carries the cool and curious power of occasionally being able to see the world vividly. Clarity bursts upon her a spray of little stars. She understands this, and thinks of it as one of the tricks of consciousness; there is something almost luxurious about it.. The narrative maze opens and permits her to pass through. She may be crowded out of her own life - she knows this for a fact and has always know it - but she possesses, as a compensatory gift, the startling ability to draft alternative versions.

There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.