Only the impossible is worth the effort.

Two things significantly distinguish human beings from the other animals; an interest in the past and the possibility of language. Brought together they make a third: Art. The invisible city not calculated to exist. Beyond the lofty pretensions of the merely ceremonial, long after the dramatic connivings of plitical life, like it or not, it remains. Time past eternally present and undestroyed.

I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.

In this life you have to be your own hero. By that I mean you have to win whatever it is that matters to you by your own strength and in your own way. Like it or not, you are alone in a forest, just like all those fairy tales that begin with a hero who’s usually stupid but somehow brave, or who might be clever, but weak as a straw, and away he goes (don’t worry about the gender), cheered on by nobody, via the castles and the bears, and the old witch and the enchanted stream, and by and by (we hope) he’ll find the treasure.

What can i tell you about the choices we make? Fate reads like the polar opposite of decision, and so much of life reads like fate.

What would it have meant to be happy? What would it have meant if things had been bright, clear, good between us?

Writing has to have a great deal of certainty and self-assurance, but it's not arrogant.