Do we tend to recall the most important parts of a novel or those that speak most directly to us, the truest lines or the flashiest ones?

I remember laughing with relief that the same old adolescent boredom goes on from generation to generation. ...the words took me back to my own years of stagnancy, and that terrible waiting for life to begin. [p. 68]

In life, every ending is just the start of another story.

Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can.

That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.

Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth. If it is not that - if it is not moral in its effect - then love is no more than an exaggerated form of pleasure.

All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things.