The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.

Satire is moral outrage transformed into comic art.

You tasted it. Isn't that enough? Of what do you ever get more than a taste? That's all we're given in life, that's all we're given of life. A taste. There is no more.

The signore...wishes her to begin at the beginning.

The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions.

Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.

Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.