“The history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories. ”

“It was a vivid memory for someone so young but one which has stayed with me forever.”

“And then there is our personal history. Memories only we share. Things not another living soul would understand.”

“Memory is like glass. A person who has died is still visible, very close. But we can no longer contact each other. Death is mute; it excludes conversations, only allows silence.”

“My memory often seems like a city of exiled poets afire with the astonishment of language, each believing in the integrity of his own witness, each with a separate version of culture and history, and the divine essential fire that is poetry itself.”

“But really, all memories are like paintings: They can be incredibly vivid and lifelike. But in the end, they both just remind us that we only get to live any particular moment once, even if we remember it forever.”