“Almost nothing beautiful or brilliant happens unless a person has thought about it a lot.”

“A key to a long, productive writing life is finding ways to support that life, emotionally and existentially.”

“What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. The Beatles. And me.”

“It almost contradicts itself," she says after a moment. "It's as if there is love and loss at the same time, together in a kind of beautiful pain.”

“Every country has its cocktail-party question. A simple one-sentence query, the answer to which unlocks a motherlode of information about the person you just met.... In Switzerland it is, Where are you from? That is all you need to know about someone.”

“If there is one thing I'd learned about hospitals, it's that they aren't interested in healing you. They are interested in stabilizing you, and then everyone is supposed to move on. They go to stabilize some more people, and you go off to do whatever you do. Healing, if it happens at all, is done on your own, long after the hospital has submitted your final insurance paperwork.”

“Emma has just returned from a visit to her factory. On the floor, she has spread piles of bags. They are everywhere, and they are beautiful. I'm tempted to get naked and roll around in the pile but restrain myself. This is a forgiving place, but even the inhabitants of 1 Shanti Road have their limits.”