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

Research can be a big clunker. It's difficult to know how you can make the historical light.

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

Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.

There are betrayals in war that are childlike compared with our human betrayals during peace. The new lovers enter the habits of the other. Things are smashed, revealed in a new light. This is done with nervous or tender sentences, although the heart is an organ of fire.

Moments before sleep are when she feels most alive, leaping across fragments of the day, bringing each moment into the bed with her like a child with schoolbooks and pencils. The day seems to have no order until these times, which are like a ledger for her, her body full of stories and situations.

People don't write about kids; you have to give them a lot of freedom, and that causes anarchy and that causes farce.