She smiled at him, with longing. 'Where do you live,' she asked, 'and how do I get there?

Twenty-year-olds have a kind of emotional idealism about relationships and about the world that enables them to say, 'No, you lied to me. Goodbye.' When they see wickedness, they walk away.

When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.

I don't care if I'm a fish, I still want a bicycle.

A novel is a daily labor over a period of years. A novel is a job. But a story can be like a mad, lovely visitor, with whom you spend a rather exciting weekend.

We had put almost all of our possessions in storage, which was a metaphor for being twenty, as were so many things.

Once love had seemed like magic. Now it seemed like tricks.