She lay in the dark and knew everything.

I read in announcements of deaths 'peacefully in his sleep' and I wonder how many of those are true. Maybe they are just conventional. I hope they are true whenever I read it of someone. [But] I would rather be awake. Peacefully awake, brim full of some calming drug that was seeing me out of the door, having said my farewells.

Shall there be womanly times? Or shall we die?

Writers are said to have superstitions and little rituals. Readers have them too.

Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.

I'm sorry to say that far worse things have happened and the literature of the Holocaust is a witness to the capacity of the novel as a form.

When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let that girl with her violin go. Now, of course, he saw that her self-effacing proposal was quite irrelevant. All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience- if only he had had them both at once- would surely have seen them both through.