What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.

You think that you are an iconoclast, but you’re not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you.... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character.

There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.

In the book the relationship with Katharine and Almasy is sort of only in the patient's mind.

What night gave Rafael was a formlessness in which everything had a purpose. As if darkness had a hidden musical language.

The one of the great sadnesses of any life is knowing what you know now and then remembering what you did not know then.

I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you.