When people looked at him they had the feeling of being shut out. He did not shut them out. He shut himself in.

Memory loss is one way of coping with damage.

I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

Words like passion and ecstasy, we learn them but they stay flat on the page. Sometimes we try to turn them over, find out what's on the other side, and everyone has a story to tell os a woman or a brothel or an opium night or a war. We fear it. We fear passion and laugh at too much love and those who love too much.

I keep telling this story - different people, different places, different times - but always you, always me, always this story, because a story is a tight rope between two worlds.

I write about sex because often it feels like the most important thing in the world.

Yes, the stories are dangerous, she was right. A book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere. A book is a door. You open it. You step through. Do you come back?