“Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.”

“The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.”

“The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you've done as you value it. Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well.”

“The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct”

“I was trying not to be happy, hopeful. I did not believe I deserved happiness or even hope, if you knew my soul.”

“... the hopeful young author had no doubt that books might change the world.”

“Then the noise faded and Legs squinted up at the sky, the moon so bright you'd never think it could be merely rock like the earth's common rock and lifeless, merely reflected light from an invisible sun and not a powerful living light of its own...”