Each letter has a shape, she told them, one shape in the world and no other, and it is your responsibility to make it perfect.

So something had begun, and now she could not stop it. Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement. She could leave this place today. She could start a new life somewhere else.

Norah watched him, serious and utterly absorbed in his task, overcome by the simple fact of his existence.

It seemed there was no end at all to the lies a person could tell, once she got started.

It's funny how things seem different, suddenly.

Its impossible to control the reception of your work - the only thing you can control is the experience of writing itself, and the work you create.

He carried Paul inside and up the stairs. He gave him a drink of water and the orange chewable aspirin he like and sat with him on the bed, holding his hand...This was what he yearned to capture on film: these rare moments where the world seemed unified, coherent, everything contained in a single fleeting image. A spareness that held beauty and hope and motion - a kind of silvery poetry, just as the body was poetry in blood and flesh and bone.