I have to teach myself not to read too much into everything. It comes from too long having to read into hardly anything at all.

A love story is not about those who lost their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing—not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past.

Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.

You built your walls too, she tells him. So I have my wall. She says it glittering in a beauty he cannot stand. She with her beautiful clothes with her pale face that laughs at everyone who smiles at her.

When I read biographies, I skip the first thirty pages about the childhood because it doesn't seem interesting to me.

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

There was a time when mapmakers named the places they travelled through with the names of lovers rather than their own.