I wondered why she craved this knowledge and found myself remembering that she was, after all, an anthropologist.

I believe in walking out of a museum before the paintings you've seen begin to run together. How else can you carry anything away with you in your mind's eye?

Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.

I keep telling myself I should try very hard to write a novel of about 210 pages... I don't seem to be capable of it, but I keep hoping it will happen.

He can't really love anyone, you know, and in the end such people are always alone, no matter how much other people once loved them.

The heart does not go backward. Only the mind.

Faith is simply whatever is real to us.