He said, "The word for moonlight is moonlight.

It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is—an intense form of thought.

I am ashamed every day, and more ashamed the next.

War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.

It occurred to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain.

the instant he knew he loved her, she slipped down his body and out of his arms

There were moments when she wasn't talking so much as fading into time, dropping back into some funnelled stretch of recent past.