“My silence knot is tied up in my hair; as if to keep my love out of my eyes. I cannot speak to one for whom i care. A hatpin serves as part of my disguise. In the play, my role is baticeer; a word which here means “person who trains bats.” The audience may feel a prick of fear, as if sharp pins are hidden in thier hats. My co-star lives on what we call a brae. His solitude might not be just an act. A piece of mail fails to arrive one day. This poignant melodrama’s based on fact.The curtain falls just as the knot unties; the silence is broken by the one who dies.”

“If you work hard, and become successful, it does not necessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard, just as if you are tall with long hair it doesn’t mean that you would be a midget if you were bald.”

“Writing is a dying form. One reads of this every day.”

“All cannot be lost when there is still so much being found”

“Literature doesn’t exactly have a strong mental-health track record.”

“There is nothing particularly wrong with salmon, of course, but like caramel candy, strawberry yogurt, or liquid carpet cleaner, if you eat too much of it you are not going to enjoy your meal.”

“Pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity.”

“One of the world’s most tiresome questions is what object one would bring to a desert island,because people always answer “a deck of cards” or “Anna Karenina” when the obvious answer is “a well equipped boat and a crew to sail me off the island and back home where I can play all the card games and read all the Russian novels I want.”

“A passport, as I’m sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between two countries, so that the official can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly.”

“If you are a student you should always get a good nights sleep unless you have come to the good part of your book, and then you should stay up all night and let your schoolwork fall by the wayside, a phrase which means ‘flunk’.”

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.”

“In love, as in life, one misheard word can be tremendously important. If you tell someone you love them, for instance, you must be absolutely certain that they have replied “I love you back” and not “I love your back” before you continue the conversation.”