But that was in the days when they expected perils to come from without, and nothing made less sense by that time than a survival room buried in a house itself becoming one big coffin.

For the eternity that Lux Lisbon looked at him, Trip Fontaine looked back, and the love he felt at that moment, truer than all subsequent loves because it never had to survive real life, still plagued him, even now in the desert, with his looks and health wasted. 'You never know what'll set the memory off,' he told us. 'A baby's face. A bell on a cat's collar. Anything.' They didn't exchange a single word. But in the weeks that followed, Trip spent his days wandering the halls, hoping for Lux to appear, the most naked person with clothes on he had ever seen.

I think, especially when you're in college, each book that you're reading tends to tell you who you are.

She wanted out of the decorating scheme.

I spend most of every day writing. I like to write every day if I can. I don't start extremely early.

Every novelist should possess a hermaphroditic imagination.

One of the reasons that art is important to me is sometimes it actually feels more coherent than life. It orders the chaos.