One of the joys of being in love is that it clarifies your priorities. Complication arises from not knowing what you want.

We drank our coffee the Russian way. That is to say we had vodka before it and vodka afterwards.

To rehearse imaginary conversations on paper is called literature. To do so out loud is called madness.

One of the joys of being in love is that it clarifies your priorities. Complication arises from not knowing what you want.

One thing I knew about the novelist’s task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death.

The railway was part scalpel, part movie camera, slicing the city open, parading its inner workings at fifty frames per second. It was on the S-Bahn that she felt least abandoned, as if the act of travelling turned back the clock, and brought her nearer to the future she had lost.

Desire is an appetite, quickly sated. Longing is a wound, an opening in the heart or the spirit. Whatever the cause, whatever the duration, it almost always leaves a scar.