“The thing about writing novels is that it must be a form of self-suppression. You don’t matter. The page is not a mirror.”

“From the beginning, he displayed his own vulnerability, his own softness, sometimes as a weapon but mostly as a way of transforming an argument so that it was not a contest to be won but rather a question to be reframed.”

“The problem arose in act four. I could not bear it any longer as Mimi sang her farewell.”

“Sometimes, there is little left to lose.”

“When I see him in his coffin, I think of that journey up the mountain”