Men had always been the reciters of poetry in the desert.

...sometimes we enter art to hide within it. It is where we can go to save ourselves, where a third-person voice protects us.

The last three books are much more a case of a moment of history, what happened almost by accident or coincidence, like being in the same elevator or lifeboat.

She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he understood her better, when she was the product of her parents. What she was now was what she herself had decided to become.

Nowadays he doesn't think of his wife, though he knows he can turn around and evoke every move of her, describe any aspect of her, the weigh of her wrist on his heart during the night.

She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.

I thought I was being loved because I was being altered.