Most distracting of all, though, was not the threat of danger but the allure of beauty.

Reassurance is such a sad, mad thing. Deep inside, everyone knows the truth.

A single day spent doing things which fail to nourish the soul is a day stolen, mutilated, and discarded in the gutter of destiny.

History indulges strange whims in the way it dresses its women.

Most true things are kind of corny, don’t you think? But we make them more sophisticated out of sheer embarrassment.

Most distracting of all, though, was not the threat of danger but the allure of beauty.

Of course I know that the twins are only words on a page, and I'm certainly not the sort of writer who talks to his characters or harbours any illusions about the creative process. But at the same time, I think it's juvenile and arrogant when literary writers compulsively remind their readers that the characters aren't real. People know that already. The challenge is to make an intelligent reader suspend disbelief, to seduce them into the reality of a narrative.