“‎"A noise, and the past was chased away, dispersed into the shadows like smoke by the brighter, louder present.”

“I am beginning to feel at home in the past and a visitor to this strange and blanched experience we agree to call the present”

“Love affairs, in their beginnings, are all about the present. But there is a point in each--an event, an exchange, some other unseen trigger--which forces the past and the future back into focus.”

“There’s something about hospital walls; though only made of bricks and plaster, when you’re inside them the noise, the reality of the teeming city beyond, disappears; it’s just outside the door, but it might as well be a magical land far, far away.”

“And as the train whistled its imminent departure, a small girl wearing neat plaits and someone else's shoes climbed its iron stairs. Smoke filled the platform, people waved and hollered, a stray dog ran barking through the crowds. Nobody noticed as the little girl stepped over the shadowed threshold; not even Aunt Ada, who some might've expected to be sheperherding her orphaned niece towards her uncertain future. And so, when the essence of light and life that had been Vivien Longmeyer contracted itself for safekeeping and disappeared deep inside her, the world kept moving and nobody saw it happen.”

“Only people unhappy in the present seek to know the future.”

“She'd filled twelve notebooks and still she hadn't stopped. Indeed, the more she wrote, the louder the stories seemed to grow, swirling in her mind, pressing against her head, anxious for release. She didn't know whether they were any good and in truth she didn't care. They were hers, and writing made them real somehow.”