All lives are interesting; no one life is more interesting than another. Its fascination depends on how much is revealed, and in what manner.

... appeals to memory were never perfectly answered.

I believed that if I was to call myself a writer, I should live on writing. If I could not live on it, even simply, I should destroy every scrap, every trace, every notebook and live some other way.

[My father] had spent his own short time like a priest in charge of a relic, forever expecting the blessed blood to liquefy.

A short story is what you see when you look out of the window.

She and Marie were Montreal girls, not trained to accompany heroes, or to hold out for dreams, but just to be patient.

I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done. I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift.