It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed.

I'm wondering if without our memories, there's nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.

There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.

I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

I like the fact that by mimicking the way memory works, a writer can actually write in a fluid way - one solid scene doesn't have to fall on another solid scene, you can just have a fragment that then dovetails into another one that took place 30 years apart from it.