But you have read Madame Bovary?' (I'd never heard of her books.) 'No.

clocks in disagreement are worse than no clock at all.

By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.

Gosh. The subjunctive is always the first to go.

There are so many cities in every single city.

Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman.

As an experienced editor, I disapprove of flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices; they belong in the 1980s with M.A.s in postmodernism and chaos theory.