“Perhaps you think too hard about what words you're going to use and how to make your mouth say them.”

“His father looked wistful. 'And you don't feel anticlimatic?'What's that?'Somewhat the opposite of elated.'What's elated again?'Good feelings. That is to say, very good. You can feel, can't you? That's what I'm driving at. You don't ever wonder... where feeling went?”

“Then there were the negatives. How he missed negatives. They were the actual rays of light, bounced straight off a landscape, an object, a person, and scarred on to the film. Photographic negatives were the hardest evidence you could get of your memories. They were the char left by the fire, the bruise left on your skin. The same light that carried to your eyes, on the day of your photograph, that image of your mother, or your father, or your close friend, had recorded itself on the film. And now, staring at the photo on the wall of Ida's transparent toes against the bed sheets, he thought how similar her feet were to negatives: both subjects of that half-world between memory and the present. These were not real, flexible, treading toes, but a play of light that showed where toes had been.”

“Light didn't conduct truth as once he'd thought. There was nothing you could do to preserve truth. Light was only of use as a metaphor for the ungraspable moment.”

“Writing is like going underwater - thank you for being there when I come back up.”

“Sometimes I just can't stop thinking enough to turn off.”

“Have you ever hoped for something? And held out for it against all the odds? Until everything you did was ridiculous? ”