“In the three minutes it takes the song to play I'm caught in a magic world of harmony and joy, a truly ecstatic joy, where the aching longing to be somewhere else, out of this city, out of this country, out of this body and out of this life, is kept at bay.”

“I swooned again – I had that moment of falling in love with reading again.”

“I hope for what I always hope for as a writer: a critical but kind reader. I think that is what we all hope for.”

“It is gaol that finally reveals to me the beauty of Shakespeare, the spirit in his words, the jaw-dropping audacity of his language.”

“Contemporary writers annoyed him, he found their worlds insular, their style too self-conscious and ironic. Theirs was not a literature that belonged to him.”

“It is possible the world is divided into three genders - there are men, there are women and then there are women who choose to have nothing to do with children. How about men without children, he answered quickly, aren't they also different from fathers? She shook her head firmly, daring him to contradict her: no, all men are the same.”

“He imagined forgiveness was like flying, that it made you soar. He imagined that it looked like an eagle, a silver bolt in the sky, that it was pure light.”

“In the three minutes it takes the song to play I'm caught in a magic world of harmony and joy, a truly ecstatic joy, where the aching longing to be somewhere else, out of this city, out of this country, out of this body and out of this life, is kept at bay.”

“Everything is fair in love and art.”