“Children, Hadley thinks to herself, children are more civilised than this gang on the sauce.”

“No one ever tells you that: that there’s no method. Writing’s a lawless place.”

“Oh no. I split my time between Paris and New York. They're the only places to really live.”

“Paris without a good book is like a pretty girl with only one eye.”

“Martha thanks Sylvia, gesturing with the book. "Just remember not to try to hard with understanding it, " Sylvia says. "Like people, they're best not to be too thoroughly understood.”

“Ernest chose to go, she finally thinks, watching the fire turn the papers black. He loved her but he could not live anymore.”

“I want to be a good man, a good writer.""Be one or the other, Ernest, not both.”

“No man should be asked to live with so much sadness, and with so little promise of relief.”

“The longer I don't write, the more I hurt.”

“Talents too many, not enough of any.”

“The hangover: such a cure, she thinks, for overthinking.”