“moss that is concentrating on being green.”

“I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligation but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free.”

“We're here, there, not here, not there, swirling like specks of dust, claiming for ourselves the rights of the universe. Being important, being nothing, being caught in lives of our own making that we never wanted. Breaking out, trying again, wondering why the past comes with us, wondering how to talk about the past at all.”

“By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, then being on somebody else's.”

“If everything I have become were not machine-made I might be able to take the risk of being human with you.”

“I am an ambitious writer – I don’t see the point of being anything, no, not anything at all, if you have no ambition for it.”

“Reading's not a luxury, art's not a luxury. It's about your soul, and it's about yourself. And if reading is a luxury, being human is a luxury”