But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it.

...but with his mother there's no question of liking him they're not even in a way separate people he began in her stomach and if she gave him life she can take it away and if he feels that withdrawal it will be the grave itself.

We all begin life as parasites within the mother, and writers begin their existence imitatively, within the body of letters.

I'm always looking for insights into the real Doris Day because I'm stuck with this infatuation and need to explain it to myself.

Russia is the only country of the world you can be homesick for while you're still in it.

Phyllis explained to him, trying to give of her deeper self, 'Don't you find it so beautiful, math? Like an endless sheet of gold chains, each link locked into the one before it, the theorems and functions, one thing making the next inevitable. It's music, hanging there in the middle of space, meaning nothing but itself, and so moving...'

It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.