Dear Leonard. To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.

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.

You can't find peace by avoiding life.

She will remain sane and she will live as she was meant to live, richly and deeply, among others of her kind, in full possession and command of her gifts.

You want to give him the book of his own life, the book that will locate him, parent him, arm him for the changes.

She'd never imagined it like this-when she thought of someone (a woman like herself)losing her mind, she'd imagined shrieks and wails, hallucinations; but at that moment it had seemed clear that there was another way, far quieter; a way that was numb and hopeless, flat, so much so that an emotion as strong as sorrow would have been a relief.

I encourage the translators of my books to take as much license as they feel that they need. This is not quite the heroic gesture it might seem, because I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself.