“A well-told lie is worth a thousand facts”

“We are expanded by tears, we are told, not reduced by them.”

“As we left they told us the old joke. "To start a journey in a sandstorm is good luck.”

“... the desert, where there is the communal book of moonlight. We were among the rumour of wells. In the palace of winds.”

“In my work I sometimes borrow Claire's nature, as well as her careful focus on the world.”

“You must talk to me, Caravaggio. Or am I just a book? Something to be read, some creature to be tempted out of a loch and shot full of morphine, full of corridors, lies, loose vegetation, pockets of stones.”

“In Canada pianos needed water. You opened up the back and left a full glass of water, and a month later the glass would be empty. Her father had told her about the dwarfs who drank only at pianos, never in bars.”