To abandon a child, she had once said to someone, when she thought Cassandra couldn't hear, was an act so cold, so careless, it refused forgiveness.

Ah, well. Life's too short for moderation, wouldn't you say?

I want to be independent. To meet interesting people. ... I just mean new people with clever things to say. Things I've never heard before. I want to be free. Open to whatever adventure comes along and sweeps me off my feet.

Adults weren’t supposed to understand their children and you were doing something wrong if they did.

Had any poet adequately described the wretched ugliness of a loved one turned inside out with grief?

There’s something about hospital walls; though only made of bricks and plaster, when you’re inside them the noise, the reality of the teeming city beyond, disappears; it’s just outside the door, but it might as well be a magical land far, far away.

All true readers have a book, a moment when real life is never going to be able to compete with fiction again.