“This is how the entire course of a life can be changed: by doing nothing.”

“And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.”

“When it's gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.”

“We go on our hands and knees and crawl our way towards the truth”

“Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?”

“At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.”

“But this first clumsy attempt showed her that the imagination itself was a source of secrets: once she had begun a story, no one could be told. Pretending in words was too tentative, too vul...”

“The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling in love could be achieved in a si...”