“A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.”

“We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, but we can never really find it, only its memory, the faintest imprint of what really was, what it meant.”

“The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself.”

“He realized that he had thought only about the first step, never imagined the last.”

“I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it.Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book”

“I'm only telling you on the truth," he said. "If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.”

“She had told Jaslyn once that everyone knows where they are from when they know where it is they want to be buried.”