“I had become a kind of information magpie, gathering to myself all manner of shiny scraps of fact and hokum and books and art-history and politics and music and film, and developing, too, a certain skill in manipulating and arranging these pitiful shards so that they glittered and caught the light. Fool's gold, or priceless nuggets mined from my singular childhood's rich bohemian seam? I leave it to others to decide.”

“My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information.”

“People who have outrageous skills and abilities are the gold nuggets in the river bed of human history.”

“I must say a few words about memory. It is full of holes. If you were to lay it out upon a table, it would resemble a scrap of lace. I am a lover of history . . . [but] history has one flaw. It is a subjective art, no less so than poetry or music. . . . The historian writes a truth. The memoirist writes a truth. The novelist writes a truth. And so on. My mother, we both know, wrote a truth in The 19th Wife– a truth that corresponded to her memory and desires. It is not the truth, certainly not. But a truth, yes . . . Her book is a fact. It remains so, even if it is snowflaked with holes.”

“But you know me-I'm an information magpie, always interested in shiny bits of intel. I've never gotten in trouble because of knowing too much.”

“He dumped its contents out on the tablecloth: a gold ring, a gold nugget, and a gold signet seal. Francisco pointed to each. I told you that this was the secret of happiness. The three objects belonged to a rich collector. When he was asleep they argued all the time. The gold ring declared it was better than the other two because miners had risked their lives to find it. The gold signet said it was better than the other two because it had sealed the messages of a king. They argued day and night, until the ring said. ‘Lets ask God’, He will decide which of us is the best. The other two agreed, and so they approached the Almighty. Each made its claim for being superior. God listened carefully, and when they were done, he said, ‘ I cant settle your dispute, I’m sorry. The gold signet seal grew angry ‘What do you mean, you cant settle it? You’re God.’ That’s the problem said God. I don’t see a ring, a nugget and a seal. All I see is gold.”