I can imagine her memories of the novel, or, more likely, of who she was and how she felt when reading it.

I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time.

She felt the intimate loss of who was meant to become.

The receding perspective of my past smothers my present. Remembering is the malignancy that feasts on my now.

Memory chooses to preserve what desire cannot hope to sustain.

We rarely consider that we're also formed by the decisions we didn't make, by events that could have happened but didn't, or by our lack of choices, for that matter.

No nostalgia is felt as keenly as nostalgia for things that never existed.

He may be my half brother, but we're not related. A chasm of incommunicable worlds lies between us.

My features have blunted with the passage of time, my reflection only faintly resembles how I see myself. Gravity demands payback for the years my body has resisted it.

I also understand that you have to lie to yourself to survive in a bad marriage, you have to delude yourself if you want to carry on in this life.

Live life as an observer but not a spectator. Learn the rules, get in the game, break some rules. Live. Experience. There is no exhilaration to be achieved sitting on the bench.

Even if their supplies of love are finite, they've figured out that life is, too, and they're no longer rationing.

I like to look at the glass half full.

Nothing makes a woman look so old as desperately trying to look young

Long is the night for the sleepless. Long is the road for the weary. Long is samsara (the cycle of continued rebirth) for the foolish, who have not recognised the true teaching.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

Inconsistency is the bugbear of fools! I wouldn't give a damn for a fellow who couldn't change his mind with a change of conditions.

The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.

Girdles and wire stays should have never been invented. No man wants to hug a padded bird cage.

This isn’t a game. We don’t want mediocre employees who can keep the status quo. We want souls. We want to win. And you’ve spent most of your time here being mediocre.