“All wisdom ends in paradox.”

“There’s something about writing that demands a leave-taking, an abandonment of the world, paradoxically, in order to see it clearly. This retreat has to be accomplished without severing the vital connection to the world, and to people, that feeds the imagination. It’s a difficult balance. And here is where these ruminations about writing touch on morality. The same constraints to writing well are also constraints to living fully. Not to be a slave to fashion or commerce, not to succumb to arid self-censorship, not to bow to popular opinion—what is all that but a description of the educated, enlightened life?”

“You used to be able to tell a person's nationality by the face. Immigration ended that. Next you discerned nationality via the footwear. Globalization ended that.”

“In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.”

“I do not think the patient truly meant to end her life. Her act was a cry for help.”

“She used a line from Trollope's Barchester Towers as an epigraph:"There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.”

“Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.”