Man," he said, "I'm not afraid of graveyards. The dead are just, you know, people who wanted the same things you and I want." "What do we want?" I asked blurrily. "Aw, man, you know," he said. "We just want, well, the same things these people wanted." "What was that?" He shrugged. "To live, I guess," he said.

..this indiscriminate love feels entirely serious to her, as if everything in the world is part of a vast, inscrutable intention and everything in the world has its own secret name, a name that cannot be conveyed in language but is simply the sight and feel of the thing itself.

Love is deep, a mystery - who wants to understand its every particular?

What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. And there it is... It was death. I chose life.

Youth is the only sexy tragedy. It's James Dean jumping into his Porsche Spyder, it's Marilyn heading off to bed.

As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.

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