“I can go years thinking that it seems impossible that I will ever satisfy that appetite again and then it is easy to satisfy and no one notices or cares, nor does it make me happy, when loneliness surrounds me like water I've already drowned in without dying.”

“ONE AFTERNOON DURING THAT FINAL SPRING, AFTER SHE HAD TURNED THIRTY AURA TURNED TO ME FROM HER DESK WHILE I LAY ON THE BED READING, AND SHE SAID, 'WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED TO BE HAPPY. WE DONT HAVE TO BE RICH. WE CAN GET JOBS IN THE UNIVERSITIES IF WE NEED THEM. WE HAVE OUR BOOKS, OUR READING, OUR WRITING, AND WE HAVE EACH OTHER, FRANK. WE DONT NEED MORE TO BE HAPPY, WE ARE SO LUCKY. DO YOU KNOW HOW LUCKY WE ARE?”

“Maybe memory is overrated. Maybe forgetting is better. (Show me the Proust of forgetting, and I'll read him tomorrow.) Sometimes it's like juggling a hundred thousand crystal balls in the air at once, trying to keep all these memories going. Every time one falls to the floor and shatters into dust, another crevice cracks open inside me, through which another chunk of who we were disappears forever.”

“Hold her tight, if you have her; hold her tight, I thought, that's my advice to all the living. Breathe her in, put your nose in her hair, breathe her in deeply. Say her name. It will always be her name. Not even death can steal it. Same alive as dead, always. Aura Estrada.”

“You always felt destined for stardom of one kind or another. But the fear that maybe that wasn't true wouldn't leave you alone. That you were no more than the classes you'd taken, the schools you'd attended, the books you'd read, the languages you spoke, your scholarships, your master's thesis on Borges and the English writers, and so on, but nobody unique, with a talent only your own. You were desperate for something that was yours alone. I was yours alone, but that isn't what you meant.”

“Living aboard one's sailboat and having neither house nor vehicle nor job, and needing none, would be hubris—the most arrogant presumption—and therefore suitable punishable by the gods. One would be drowned by Poseidon early on and die extremely happy.”

“I can't keep my head above water one minute to the next: it's not just the parties and the goo-gooing with what's-her-name, I've got the decide how long the Five Hundredth Anniversary Parade is going to be and where does it start and when does it start and which nobleman gets to march in front of which other nobleman so that everyone's still speaking to me at the end of it, plus I've got a wife to murder and a country to frame for it, plus I've got to get the war going once that's all happened, and all this is stuff I've got to do myself. Here's what it all comes down to: I'm just swamped, Ty.”