I dreamt that I woke up. It's the oldest dream of all, and I've just had it

He always thought that Touie's long illness would somehow prepare him for her death. He always imagined that grief anf guilt, if they followed, would be more clear-edged, more defined, more finite. Instead they seem like weather, like clouds constantly re-forming into new shapes, blown by nameless, unidentifiable winds.

To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.

The writer's life [is] full of frailty and defeat like any other life. What counts is the work. Yet the work can quite easily be buried, or half-buried, by the life.

And no, it wasn't shame I now felt, or guilt, but something rarer in my life and stronger than both: remorse. A feeling which is more complicated, curdled, and primeval. Whose chief characteristic is that nothing can be done about it: too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, for amends to be made.