Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends.

The English language on her tongue became a smoke-screen, without her eyes changing expression in the least.

I don’t know why it is that I have always been happier thinking of somewhere I have been or wanted to go, than where I am at the time. I find it difficult to be happy in the present.

I still write in long hand. I type like a chimpanzee.

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments and shivers of the heart.

There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.