He has been disassembled by her. And if she has brought him to this, what has he brought her to?

He was a man who wrote, who interpreted the world. Wisdom grew out of being handed just the smallest sliver of emotion. A glance could lead to paragraphs of theory.

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.

How we are almost nothing. We think, in our youth, we are the centre of the universe, but we simply respond, go this way or that by accident, survive or improve by the luck of the draw, with little choice or determination on our part.

I tend not to know what the plot is or the story is or even the theme. Those things come later, for me.

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

But we were interested in how our lives could mean something to the past. We sailed into the past.