There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined.

Silly humans. Banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity.

She is not a writer at all, really; she is merely a gifted eccentric.

But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another.

Language in fiction is made up of equal parts meaning and music. The sentences should have rhythm and cadence, they should engage and delight the inner ear.

You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire - that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it's just this book.

The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.