"In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?"

"it keeps happening: i forget - but only for a fraction of a second - and then the truth slams back into me, so hard that i expect the people around me to be shaken by it too. no one warns anyone about this situation. they should be explaining it to you from the moment you’re born, they should brand the idea into your head, they should tell us the truth about death.

how horrific and final it really feels - and how alone you will be with the horror. and how you will forget for just a second, and when you remember again, it’s like remembering that the sun has been extinguished."

"Would that all excellent books were foundlings, without father or mother, that so it might be, we could glorify them, without including their ostensible authors."

"Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before."

"Diamonds were nothing more than carbon, but carbon in a crystal lattice that made it the hardest known mineral in nature. That was the way we all were headed. I was sure of it. We were destined to be diamonds!

How exciting it was to think that long after the world had ended, whatever was left of our bodies would be transformed into a dazzling blizzard of diamond dust, blowing out towards eternity in the red glow of a dying sun.

"

"A coincidence is sometimes just the world’s way of getting your attention - a way of getting you to sit up and take notice once in a while. Some coincidences are so slight as to barely merit a raised eyebrow. Others carry such weight that, when acted upon accordingly, they have the power to change the course of your life."

"I am a product […of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents’ interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass."

"The Devil comes to the writer and says, ‘I will make you the best writer of your generation. Never mind generation - of this century. No - this millennium! Not only the best, but the most famous, and also the richest; in addition to that, you will be very influential and your glory will endure for ever. All you have to do is sell me your grandmother, your mother, your wife, your kids, your dog and your soul.’
‘Sure,’ says the writer, ‘Absolutely - give me the pen, where do I sign?’ Then he hesitates. ‘Just a minute,’ he says. ‘What’s the catch?’"