“People are complicated, she said. Didnt they teach you that in biography school?”

“As the chapters took shape, a change came over her. It was the double-sided recognition that this book, the last that she would write, might achieve esteem and success equal to her great novel, but...”

“Of course, when you fall out of love, its rarely about just one failure or one betrayal, is it? . . . How does it happen? All those things you once loved about each other are replaced by other thin...”

“Take a seat, Charlie, he said. Ill kill you in a few minutes. Itll be good for you.”

“Over the years, Skye sampled every drug she could find, and like many addicts, had a working knowledge of pharmacology. She snorted coke and swallowed pills. She took downersorange and red Seconal,...”

“At first, he talked about the flowers in the garden behind his country house in Surrey. His voice still had its Midlands accent but was soft now and barely audible. He knew the plants by name and t...”

“Take a seat, Charlie, he said. Ill kill you in a few minutes. Itll be good for you.”

“What spares us is memory,” he said. “It’s what makes us worth saving. However low we sink, whatever promise we no longer fulfill, we tell our stories. That’s why you’re so important, Charlie. You’r...”

“Take a seat, Charlie,” he said. “I’ll kill you in a few minutes. It’ll be good for you.”

“But who can remember pain, once its over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In lif...”

“My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely ...”

“There are many different stories to tell. It's never the same. Every day weather blows in and out, alters the surface. Sometimes it is stripped down to a single essential truth, the thing that is a...”

“I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later...”

“All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.All of them?Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, cap...”