If I could keep a single moment for all time, that would be the one. I became the very air; I was full of stars.

Your lies didn't stop me loving you; your truth hasn't stopped me either.

I barely noticed loneliness anymore; it was my normal condition, by necessity if not by nature.

Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.

I had felt the shot coming; I hadn't realized the bow was loaded with this very quarrel, perfectly calibrated to hit him hardest. What part of me had been studying him, stockpiling knowledge as ammunition?

And I realized a wondrous truth: that knowledge could be our treasure, that there were things humankind knew that we did not, that our conquest need not comprise taking and killing, but could consist of our mutual conquest of ignorance and distrust.

That’s the secret to performance: conviction. The right note played tentatively still misses its mark, but play boldly and no one will question you. If one believes there is truth in art – and I do – then it’s troubling how similar the skill of performing is to lying. Maybe lying is itself a kind of art. I think about that more than I should.