“I was getting an A for work. But not for talent. The story of my life.”

“I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.”

“How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?”

“Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.”

“Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.”

“I think you love him more than you can bear.”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”