The French word for “plot,” <i>trame</i>, also means “heft” or “weave. - Edmund White

The sun found over there a single small window to dazzle - - just as I imagined God, if He existed, might find in a whole crowd only one soul turned at the right angle to reflect his glory.

Love is a source of anxiety until it is source of boredom; only friendship feeds the spirit. Love raises great expectations in us that it never satisfies; the hopes based on friendship are milder and in the present, and they exist only because they've already been rewarded. Love is a script about just a few repeated themes we have a hard time following, though we make every effort to conform to its tone. Friendship is a permis de séjour that enables us to go anywhere and do anything exactly as our whims dictate.

Critics always praise precision in writing, and some great writers (Joyce, Beckett, Gustave Flaubert) are masters of clarity — but one of the great (and seldom mentioned) resources of fiction is vagueness.