I was worried that my exuberant drug use had damaged my brain and my nervous system and maybe even my soul in some irreparable and perhaps not readily apparent way.
I turned, painting in hand, to show it to her, and then realized she wasn't there. Or - she was there and she wasn't. Part of her was there, but it was invisible. The invisible part was the important...
I thought they spoke Russian in the Ukraine. Well, yes. Depends what part of Ukraine. They’re not so different languages, the two.
I think this goes more to the idea of ‘relentless irony’ than ‘divine providence.’ Yes—but why give it a name? Can’t they both be the same thing?
I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone's life when character is fixed forever.
I saw her reflection behind me, in the mirror. I was speechless. Somehow I knew I wasn’t allowed to turn around—it was against the rules, whatever the rules of the place were—but we could see each oth...
I often thought how peculiar my life must look to someone reading those letters, far away.
I never realized, you know, how much we rely on appearances, he said. It's not that we're so smart, it's just that we don't look like we did it. We might as well be a bunch of Sunday-school teachers a...
I never got used to the way the horizon there could just erase itself and leave you marooned, adrift, in an incomplete dreamscape that was like a sketch for the world you knew...
I missed her so much I wanted to die: a hard, physical longing, like a craving for air underwater.
I liked the idea of living in a city — any city, especially a strange one — liked the thought of traffic and crowds, of working in a bookstore, waiting tables in a coffee shop, who knew what kind of s...
I hate Gucci,' said Francis.'Do you?' said Henry, glancing up from his reverie. 'Really? I think it's rather grand.''Come on, Henry.''Well, it's so expensive, but it's so ugly too, isn't it? I think t...
I felt like a lifetime had come and gone since my night with Pippa and I thought how happy I'd been, rushing to meet her in the sharp-edged winter darkness, my elation at spotting her under a streetla...
How were you supposed to explain this kind of thing? It seemed stupid to try. Even the memory was starting to seem vague and starry with unreality, like a dream where the details get fainter the harde...
His warmth, which seemed to presume upon some happy old intimacy we did not share, had thrown me into awkwardness.
God has tortured Theo plenty. If suffering makes noble, then he is a prince.
Five minutes before Julian arrived, they might be slouched in the living room -- curtains drawn, dinner simmering on chafing dishes in the kitchen, everyone tugging at collars and dull-eyed with fatig...
Ever since I’d started riding the train by myself I’d loved to go there alone and roam around until I got lost, wandering deeper and deeper in the maze of galleries until sometimes I found myself in f...
Even if you don’t like Poe—he invented the detective story. And science fiction. In essence, he invented a huge part of the twentieth century.
Death is the mother of beauty, said Henry. And what is beauty? Terror.