. . . he felt himself entering a moment so real he could only run toward it, shouting.

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

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

He wanted to tell her that he was inspired and vigilant and recklessly alone, that his body contained his unsteady heart and something else, something he felt but could not describe: porous and spiky, shifting with flecks of thought, with urge and memory; salted with brightness, flickerings of white and green and pale gold; something that loved stars because it was made of the same substance.

Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I'm finishing, even if it's turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don't admit it, they're not being honest.

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

we become the stories we tell ourselves