This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.

You grew old first not in your own eyes, but in other people's eyes; then, slowly, you agreed with their opinion of you.

Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary

WHORES. Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius.

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

It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.

We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we can't understand time, can't grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history--even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it?