Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.

Another person's illness is often harder to bear than one's own.

Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.

The very madness of the scheme protects it.

The bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved.

People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.

Our destiny can be examined, but it cannot be justified or totally explained. We are simply here.