A life can get knocked into a new orbit by a car crash, a lottery win or just a bleary-eyed consultant giving bad news in a calm voice.

If I want to act relaxed, it's going to take all my cunning, skill, and concentration.

I often lose myself in the Sudoku-like challenges of making a book work.

The her that lived in her looked out through her eyes, through my eyes, and at the me that lives in me.

I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.

I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. Diagonal People.

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