she had a laugh that hinted it had rolled around once or twice in the mud.

...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 past is still, for us, a place that is not safely settled.

As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.

The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion

You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.

So many nurses had turned into emotionally disturbed handmaidens of the war, in their yellow-and-crimson uniforms with bone buttons.