And feeling clever, I've always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful.

...the world she ran through loved her and would give her what she wanted and would let it happen.

It was always the view of my parents...that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.

Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information.

How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.

And feeling clever, I've always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful.

But what really happened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish.