“I felt emptied-out and singing with echoes, unrecognizable to myself: that particular feeling like your own house on the day you move out.”

“Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what's not in it.”

“They count that as your birthday -- the day your mother gets up.""Not the day you were born?"Not the day you came out. They count the mother getting better as all part of the birth.”

“Emelina and I took each other in. All morning I'd felt the strange disjuncture that comes from reconnecting with your past. There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak to that other person and it answers; it's like having a stranger as a house guest in your skin.”

“All morning I'd felt the strange disjuncture that comes from reconnecting with your past. There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak to that other person and it answers; it's like having a stranger as a house guest in your skin.”

“The essential ingredient of authorship is authority. You hunt it out in a library, you chase it down the street, or you knit it from the fiber of your own will. From somewhere, you get it. You begin”

“The thing is, it's my own fault. I just can't put up with a person that won't go out of his way for me. And that's what a man is. Somebody that won't go out of his way for you. I bet it says that in the dictionary.”