All writers have their own pet commandments.

I'm really wary of self-help books.

Your muscles can tense with hope.

We contain more than our understanding allows us, at a given moment, to understand.

If your relationship fills you with a sense of luck, you’ve chosen well.

The muffling blanket would fall over my thoughts.

And he sought, with quick vanity, the reflection in a big mirror opposite him. Just as fast he turned away. He appeared to have reached that situation of health where vanity meant you didn’t risk your face in the mirror.

Love wasn’t a thing you fell in, but rose to. It was what stopped you from falling.

Regret doesn’t budge things; it seems crazy that the force of all that human want can’t amend a moment, can’t even stir a pebble.

What can one do with levels of gloom and guilt, fear and disbelief, of bewilderment above one’s capacity to register?