For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.

Why does any martyr cooperate with his judases?...We see a game beyond the endgame...As Seneca warned Nero: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor.

Many children are natural fantasists, I think, perhaps because their imaginations have yet to be clobbered into submission by experience.

There's a link between bigotry and bad spelling.

Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one's core. Rome'll decline and fall again, Cortés'll lay Tenochtitlán to waste again, and later, Ewing will sail again, Adrian'll be blown to pieces again, you and I'll sleep under the Corsican stars again, I'll come to Bruges again, fall in and out of love with Eva again, you'll read this letter again, the sun'll grow cold again. Nietzsche's gramophone record. When it ends, the Old One plays it again, for an eternity of eternities.

But no, we cross, crisscross, and recross our old tracks like figure skaters.

...there ain't no journey what don't change you some.