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

All writers are insecure, the male ones especially. It's well known. Why else would they spend so much time on make-believe? They're only happy in their imaginary worlds, because that's where they're in charge - where they're God. Did you know that Hemingway's mother dressed him as a girl until he was six years old?" I was not offended by Claudia's glib psychological theory. Like many glib psychological theories, it struck me as fundamentally correct.

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

The future can always wait so long as the here-and-now is rapturous.

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.

I was already at an age when putting off anything was a bad idea.