“you're an insomniac, you tell yourself: there are profound truths revealed only to the insomniac by night like those phosphorescent minerals veined and glimmering in the dark but coarse and ordinary otherwise; you have to examine such minerals in the absence of light to discover their beauty, you tell yourself.”

“Why should I want what's good for me?' Beatrice asked him, smiling. 'Is that what you want for yourself - only what's good for you?”

“If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.”

“Remembering backward is the easy thing. If you could remember forward, you could save yourself...”

“You ordinary people who read and do not write, who 'like to read' and know nothing of the sufferings of writers, how fortunate you are!”

“Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.”

“Close up she saw that Molina's eyes were beautiful and dark thik eye lashed the way Lisette's mother tried to make hers with a mascara brush. The skin beneath Molina's eyes were soft and bruised looking and on her throat were tiny dark moles. It did not seem right that a woman like Molina, who you could tell was a mother-her body was a mother's body for sure, wide hips-could be a cop;it did not seem right that this person was carrying a gun, in a holster attached to leather belt, and that she could use it, if she wanted to.”