“In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.”

“He had scores to settle with the world, and she, at that moment, was world enough for him.”

“Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make ones living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilizatio...”

“How flat all sounds are at the seaside, flat and yet emphatic, like the sound of gunshots heard at a distance.”

“Still the dream persists, suppressed but always there, that somehow by some miraculous effort of the heart what was done could be undone. What form would such atonement take that would turn back ti...”

“What I was afraid of was my own grief, the weight of it, the ineluctable corrosive force of it, and the stark awareness I had of being, for the first time in my life, entirely alone, a Crusoe shipw...”

“Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.”

“Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face - I know it's an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.”

“So its true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”

“How do you mourn endless numbers of people in endless numbers of places? Is there a form for it, a requisite time and place for mourning? Is there ever an end to it? Can there ever be an end to it?”

“It's all rather political, mourning is.”

“And that was part of the tragedy: I had just started to know her. I was mourning the relationship that could have blossomed but didnt have a chance to grow.”

“I have a vivid, apocalyptic imagination.”