Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?

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

Names are still magic; even Sharon, Karen, Darren, and Warren are magic to somebody somewhere. In fairy stories, naming is knowledge. When I know your name, I can call your name, and when I call your name, you'll come to me.

I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me.

For me, the most painful thing is the thought of shelves without books. This is the problem with the digital thing. I do not want to see it on electronic. I do not want to see all of those indices on Kindle. I don't want this physical object to disappear, because when it's there and it's present, it's continually suggesting new relationships in a way that an electronic index couldn't.

Their throats were bare for God.

When she bleeds the smells I know change colour. There is iron in her soul on those days. She smells like a gun.