Love could be fractured and serve different purposes, and that intense love could be divided, between people just as easily as between moments of time.

I learnt too late that what is most important to us is always most precious at the moment it occurs, and it is precious in its absolute immediacy and not as some vague confirmation of future directions; since the only certain fact, aside from death, is the flimsiness of everything.

If time stood still, and we could choose the time, the best time, then love without pain would be all I know.

In the presence of their love I sensed my lonliness, and I understood for a moment, clearly, that deep and basic human desire for companionship at depth.

Comfort is beauty muted by heroin. Sadness is beauty drained by lack of it.

The wonder to me is not that she made it through at all but that she made it through so relatively intact, so vibrant. So free of bitterness and so empty of resentment.

For the Tintin books were my emotional universe. To read them felt quite simply like being loved: in advance and by an entire world of pure possibility, my future. But to write to the author was to reach out for the lover. Even today, the power of reading one remains visceral: each book acts as a form of transportation, not just to the emotional landscape of this first literary love affair but to very specific memories.