Fiction isn't memoir and memoir isn't fiction.

History is written by the future, and therefore distorted at its start.

The highest task of intelligence: to imagine a future and then smooth its approach.

But the reality of power – a field of study Ezzedine had ignored, even as he benefited from it – could not be denied infinitely. He would be subject to its immutable laws whether he studied them or pretended they didn’t exist.

Perhaps men could accustom themselves to living with a small amount of doubt. I think doubt a necessary ingredient to live.

He considered her ruthless, in his moments of pain, but also in moments of happiness, experienced mere feet from her but bound right wrist to left ankle by her rules: nothing could evolve, nothing could be consummated, nothing repressed could surface, nothing previously accepted could be ignored. One must not speak of it, in case one could no longer sing of it. Instead, she only kept directing his attention to the wondrously charged air they could tame and make dance between them.

He fell in love with Manhattan’s skyline, like a first-time brothel guest falling for a seasoned professional. He mused over her reflections in the black East River at dusk, dawn, or darkest night, and each haloed light-in a tower or strung along the jeweled and sprawling spider legs of the Brooklyn Bridge’s spans-hinted at some meaning, which could be understood only when made audible by music and encoded in lyrics.

All our skill at disproving things is like a wall we build between us and wonder. To jump that wall, you need a long running start.-The Tragedy of Arthur.

If music can ever restore a lost past, then this was the moment. Redemption! We do crave it. But music is different: we tolerate songs without redemption.

Love is not sufficient. It never has been. Stories that claim otherwise are lies. There’s always SOMETHING after happily ever after.