girls forbidden to dance would only attract husbands with bad complexions and sunken chests.

She may have looked normal on the outside, but once you'd seen her handwriting you knew she was deliciously complicated inside.

You begin always knowing nothing. You remain forever an amateur, a first timer.

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

Words, words, word. Once, I had the gift. I could make love out of words as a potter makes cups of clay. Love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. For sixpence a line, I could cause a riot in a nunnery. But now -- I have lost my gift. It's as if my quill is broken, as if the organ of my imagination has dried up, as if the proud -illegible word- of my genius has collapsed.

There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.

Chunks of his life fell away, so that while we were moving ahead in time, he was moving back.