Memory has a heavy backspin, yet it’s still impossible to land exactly where we took off.

The contemporary American novelist benefits in a way from being ignored. It makes you angrier and makes you want to go into all of those places where you shouldnt.

The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.

The essence of intelligence was to know when, or if, to expose even the heart's deep need for instruction.

She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.

She takes another long haul, lets the smoke settle in her lungs-- she has heard somewhere that cigarettes are good for grief. One long drag and you forget how to cry. The body too busy dealing with the poison.

Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.