“All of this was understood, and if not condoned, at least pardoned.”

“She did understand, or at least she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, and said nothing about it, and prayed for the power to forgive, and did forgive. But he can't have found living with her forgiveness all that easy. Breakfast in a haze of forgiveness: coffee with forgiveness, porridge with forgiveness, forgiveness on the buttered toast. He would have been helpless against it, for how can you repudiate something that is never spoken? She resented, too, the nurse, or the many nurses, who had attended my father in the various hospitals. She wished him to owe his recovery to her alone—to her care, to her tireless devotion. That is the other side of selflessness: its tyranny.”

“By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being.”

“I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.”

“Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.”

“There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits.”

“There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive.”