I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How good you are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain.

For God's sake stop making people in your image. Harry was real. He wasn't just your hero and my lover. He was Harry. He was in a racket. He did bad things. What about it? He was the man we knew.

I couldn't help wondering, is my husband so unattractive that no woman has ever wanted him? Except me, of course. I must have wanted him, in a way, once, but I've forgotten why, and I was too young to know what I was choosing.

The subject of a novel is not the plot. Who remembers what happened to Lucien de Rebempre in the end?

That instinct for human character that is perhaps inherent in an imaginative writer.

It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.

The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.