(although anyone with half a brain must surely be mired in existential gloom all the time)

Hindsight's a wonderful thing. If we all had it there would be no history to write about.

Time was a thief, he stole your life away from you and the only way you could get it back was to outwit him and snatch it right back.

Not being published would be great. When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I'm totally insane.

Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance.

Julia's vocabulary was "chock-full" of strangely archaic words - "spiffing," "crumbs," "jeepers" - that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls' annual rather than in Julia's own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion.

Sylvie's knowledge, like Izzie's, was random yet far-ranging, 'The sign that one has acquired one's learning from reading novels rather than an education.