“I knew that on that island one was driven back into the past. There was so much space, so much silence, so few meetings that one too easily saw out of the present, and then the past seemed ten time...”

“He stared to sea. "I gave up all ideas of practicing medicine. In spite of what I have just said about the wave and the water, in those years in France I am afraid I lived a selfish life. That is, ...”

“Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?''For fun?''Fun!' He pounced on the word. 'Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction.”

“Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society.”

“The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed.""I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self.""You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray ...”

“Think. In a minute from now you could be saying, I risked death. I threw for life, and I won life. It is a very wonderful feeling. To have survived.”

“Everything is important. To the smallest insect, even the mouldering tree, the deepest stone in the drift.”

“Now I sense the perfume of flowers like seeing a new thing.I know they smell just as well as I know I existed.Theyre things known from the outside.But now I know with my breathing from the back of ...”

“Existence is a priceless gift and the beauties of nature are the priceless gifts of the existence!”

“Because we all need to believe in movies, sometimes.”

“You float like a feather," sings Radiohead, "In a beautiful world." I've listened several times to the Radiohead songs, because it was nice of Raymond to say he heard a bit of them in what I sang. ...”

“I think this is why Ellis took so many moving pictures of us. Because he knew that people come in and out of your life, and a picture fixes them in the moment they reach out to you.”

“Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it's any less true.”

“Oh, Sweetie. No one ever gets through their TBR list. For every book you finish, you'll add five more. That's just the way it works.”

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”