The best form of government is one that is dying, because that means it’s giving way to something else.

I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.

And that's a life, isn't it? Some achievements and some disappointments. It's been interesting to me, though I wouldn't complain or be amazed if others found it less so. Maybe, in a way, Adrian knew what he was doing. Not that I would have missed my own life for anything, you understand. [pp.60-61]

But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life’s business.

I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind.

Writers of either gender ought to be able to do the opposite sex-that's one basic test of competence, after all.

I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.