A book consists of two layers: on top, the readable layer ... and underneath, a layer that was inaccessible. You only sense its existence in a moment of distraction from the literal reading, the way you see childhood through a child. It would take forever to tell what you see, and it would be pointless.

When it's in a book I don't think it'll hurt any more ...exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.

Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met.

I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.

I don't have general views about anything, except social injustice.

It’s not that you have to achieve anything, it’s that you have to get away from where you are.

In love there are no vacations. No such thing. Love has to be lived fully with its boredom and all that.