There were people everywhere but no one was mine, and I was no one's.

In the end, all disguises must drop.

Maybe that's what growing up means, in the end - you go far enough in the direction of - somewhere - and you realise that you've neutered the capacity of the term home to mean anything. [...] We don't get an endless number of orbits away from the place where meaning first arises, that treasure-house of first experiences. What we learn, instead, is that our adventures secure us in our isolation. Experience revokes our licence to return to simpler times. Sooner or later, there's no place remotely like home.

She wasn't afraid of doing good or of resisting evil. She was merely afraid she might not be able to tell the difference.

When I write a book, I write very cleanly from page one to the last page. I hardly ever write out of sequence.

Sorrow has a name, and its name is loneliness. Sorrow has a shape, and its shape is absence. Sorrow is a sickness like any other.

I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing.