“There are many different stories to tell. It's never the same. Every day weather blows in and out, alters the surface. Sometimes it is stripped down to a single essential truth, the thing that is always believed, no matter what. The seeds from which the garden has grown.”

“One of the oddest things about being grown-up was looking back at something you thought you knew and finding out the truth of it was completely different from what you had always believed.”

“sometimes no matter how many eyelashes or dandelion seeds you blow, no matter how much of your heart you tear out and slap on your sleeve, it just ain't gonna happen.”

“He was the same as everyone else: he carried his past inside him. There was no escape from it. No matter how hard you push it down, the truth always comes to the surface.”

“I have never been able to understand the complaint that a story is "depressing" because of its subject matter. What depresses me are stories that don't seem to know these things go on, or hide them in resolute chipperness; "witty stories," in which every problem is the occasion for a joke; "upbeat" stories that flog you with transcendence. Please. We're grown ups now.”

“I sometimes think that never blows so redThe Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;That every Hyacinth the Garden wearsDropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.”