“After all why should our goal be the reinstatement of an illusory 'exact' relationship between events and words? If you probe in the ashes you will never learn anything about the fire: by the time the ashes can be handled the meaning has passed on. Every adventure is a cup so empty it can be drunk from again and again and again. Every adventure is so perfect it verges on silence.”

“Scatter the ashes of the past, happy in the wind. It is so healing, when you start again.”

“This explains why I've been making Recession Tea- letting a teabag steep for half the time it should so I can use it again for a second cup later.”

“Centuries pass when nothing happens, and then in a few short years events of such tremendous importance take place that the world is never the same again .... Now's the time to be alive-- to see it happen, to be a part of it. That makes the blood race, and each breath is an adventure.”

“I want to drink you until there’s nothing left. I want you to magically rematerialize so I can do it again. I want a phoenix that will rise from the ashes just so I can keep burning her. I thought I knew madness, but I didn’t know it before you.”

“Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when you write, you put into every sentence an overflow of meaning, and you create in every sentence as many resonances and double meanings and ambiguities as you can possibly pack in there, so that people can read it again and get something new each time.”