I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.

I am born hungry. Ravenous. I want to eat the world, and I can never be satiated.

The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared.

That's what I always liked about science fiction - you can make the world end. Humour is my multiple warhead delivery system.

Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.

In the first few pages, Kundera discusses several abstract historical figures: Robespierre, Nietzsche, Hitler. For Eunice's sake, I wanted him to get to the plot, to introduce actual "living" characters - I recalled this was a love story - and to leave the world of ideas behind. Here we were, two people lying in bed, Eunice's worried head propped on my collarbone, and I wanted us to feel something in common. I wanted this complex language, this surge of intellect, to be processed into love. Isn't that how they used to do it a century ago, people reading poetry to one another?

I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth.