“He has explained why it is that ambiguity touches his heart more nearly than the death and marriage style of finish that i prefer.”

“I read old novels. The reason is simple: I prefer proper endings. Marriages and deaths, noble sacrifices and miraculous restorations, tragic separations and unhoped-for reunions, great falls and dreams fulfilled; these, in my view, constitute an ending worth the wait. They should come after adventures, perils, dangers and dilemmas, and wind everything up nice and neatly. Endings like this are to be found more commonly in old novels than new ones, so I read old novels.”

“After a great many questions I eventually ascertained that he is suffering from some kind of disorder of the mind. Is there anything more sorrowful than a brain whose proper function has been disrupted?”

“All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.”

“Of course I loved books more than people.”

“My story - my own personal story - ended before my writing began. Storytelling has only ever been a way of filling in the time since everything finished.”

“... [They] took it upon themselves to start the laborious process of cranking up life again, after death has stopped us all in its tracks.”