I shall start at the beginning. Though of coarse, the beginning is never where you think it is.

My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen.

There was no single moment when I thought, Aha! What a great idea! Rather there was a slow and gradual accumulation of numerous small ideas.

What better way to get to know someone than through her choice and treatment of books?

Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words on the other hand, were a lifeline. They left their hushed rhythm behind, a counter to the slow in and out of Emmeline's breathing.

Fate, at first so amenable, so reasonable, so open to negotiation, ends up by exacting a cruel revenge for happiness.

A birth is not really a beginning. Our lives at the start are not really our own but only the continuation of someone else's story.