Children love secret club houses. They love secrecy even when there's no need for secrecy

Always remember, the person we’re really working for is the person who’s restoring the piece a hundred years from now. He’s the one we want to impress.

Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.

The trouble is when people read about authors, they don't feel compelled to read the authors' work.

And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky—so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.

I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.

One likes to think there's something in it, that old platitude amor vincit omnia. But if I've learned one thing in my short sad life, it is that that particular platitude is a lie. Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.