The ancients believed in fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behavior. The burden is intolerable.

Each book is a different staging post on the writer's journey, and each book stands by itself, regardless of the writer's relationship to it.

Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour.

your morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart before you, I replied upon it, it had seen active service and grown strong. Now you alter its pace with your own rhythm you play upon me, drumming me taught.

Everything is imprinted for ever with what it once was.

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

You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved.