City of Glass

"It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. Much later, when he was able to think about the things that happened to him, he would conclude that nothing was real except chance. But that was much later. In the beginning, there was simply the event and its consequences. Whether or not it might have turned out differently, or whether it was all predetermined with the first words that came from the stranger's mouth, is not the question. The question is the story itself, and whether or not it means something is not for the story to tell."

. . .

"As for me, I have my good days and my bad days. When the bad days come, I think of the ones that were good. Memory is a great blessing, Peter. The next best thing to death."

. . .

"He had nothing to fall back on anymore but himself. And of all the things he discovered during the days he was there, this was the one he did not doubt: that he was falling. What he did not understand, however, was this: in that he was falling, how could he be expected to catch himself as well? Was it possible to be at the top and the bottom at the same time? It did not seem to make sense."

. . .

"At a certain point, he realized that the more he wrote, the sooner the time would come when he could no longer write anything."

-Paul Auster