“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...”

“What spares us is memory, he said. Its what makes us worth saving. However low we sink, whatever promise we no longer fulfill, we tell our stories. Thats why youre so important, Charlie. Youre a gu...”

“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...”

“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...”

“What spares us is memory, he said. Its what makes us worth saving. However low we sink, whatever promise we no longer fulfill, we tell our stories. Thats why youre so important, Charlie. Youre a gu...”

“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.”

“Theres no way you can kill someone and get to the other side of the experience unchanged.”

“Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled enemy?”

“He had also learned that there is no use murdering people; there are always so many left, and if you tried to murder them all you would never get anything else done.”