We surrounded ourselves with smoke and loud noise. That's the way we chose to live. I'm prepared to defend it.

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

It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don't know.

These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after.

We need time to lose interest in things.

The writer is driven by his conviction that some truths aren't arrived at so easily, that life is still full of mystery, that it might be better for you, Dear Reader, if you went back to the Living section of your newspaper because this is the dying section and you don't really want to be here.

Something is always happening, even on the quietest days and deep into the night, if you stand a while and look.