The kiss was innocent--innocent enough--but it was also full of something not unlike what Virginia wants from London, from life; it was full of a love complex and ravenous, ancient, neither this nor that. It will serve as this afternoon's manifestation of the central mystery itself, the elusive brightness that shines from the edges of certain dreams; the brightness which, when we awaken, is already fading from our minds, and which we rise in the hope of finding, perhaps today, this new day in which anything might happen, anything at all.

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.

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.

The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things.

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

It's the world, you live in it, even if some boy has made a fool of you.