Things in life have no real beginning, though our stories about them always do.

We stumble on, thinks Jaslyn, bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves. It is almost enough.

Where happiness was not a possibility, the illusion of it was always more important.

We shape ourselves by our imaginative reach.

Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.

We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, but we can never really find it, only its memory, the faintest imprint of what really was, what it meant.

He looks like the sort of man who can't afford to leave, and doesn't want to stay, and so he is doing both at once.