“Literature can stop my heart and execute me for a moment, allow me to become someone else.”

“Literature can remind us that not all ife is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.”

“The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.”

“It struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so you can know where you came from.”

“They told me Corrigan smashed all the bones in his chest when he hit the steering wheel. I thought, Well at least in heaven his Spanish chick'll be able to reach in and grab his heart.”

“She's always thought that one of the beauties of New York is that you can be from anywhere and within moments of landing its yours.”

“It was America, after all. The sort of place where you should be allowed to walk as high as you wanted. But what if you were the one walking underneath? What if the tightrope walker really had fallen? It was quite possible that he could have killed not just himself, but a dozen people below. Recklessness and freedom - how did they become a cocktail?”