Over the years, confusing fragments, lost corners of stories, have a clearer meaning when seen in a new light, a different place.

So the books for the Englishman, as he listened intently or not, had gaps of plot like sections of a road washed out by storms, missing incidents as if locusts had consumed a section of tapestry, as if plaster loosened by the bombing had fallen away from a mural at night.

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

Here. Where I am anonymous and alone in a white room with no history and no parading. So I can make something unknown in the shape of this room. Where I am King of Corners.

...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 heart is an organ of fire.

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