oil paints...the look of licked lips.

Your friend is intellectually honourable," Jimmy's mother would say. "He doesn't lie to himself.

I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.

How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.

Teaching other people to write is not something I can do. The only kind of advice I can give them will be trite by its nature. Of course, read a lot, write a lot. The kind of advice I wish I had been given is all of a practical nature, having to do with publishers and agents.

The past is a closed door.

We pulled the seeds out and scattered them on their flossy parachutes, leaving only the leathery brownish yellow tongue, soft as the inside of an elbow.