Eugene Karr

“Kate had already let herself in and was watching the news. Kate: I had forgotten she was coming over for the evening. She was my—? I never knew what to call her. To say she was my girlfriend was absurd; no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriend. Partner wasn't right either, as we didn't live under the same roof. Lover? How could one keep a straight face? Mistress? Do me a favor. Fiancee? Certainly not. I suppose I ought to have realized it was ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship. (Kate wasn't her real name, by the way, but I don't see why she should be dragged into all this. In any case, it suits her better than the name she does have: she looks like a Kate, if you know what I mean — sensible but sassy, girlish but always willing to be one of the boys. She worked in television, but let's not hold that against her.)”
― Robert Harris, The Ghost

“How to get out of the room that is the book that will go on being written for as long as he stays in the room?”
― Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy

“What you have to understand is that sometimes things are the way they seem. By that I don't mean that they aren't the way they might be thought to be, beneath what you see, necessarily, what I mean is that. . . Christ: I"ll start this again.
Sometimes, things are not the way they seem. You look at something and it seems straightforward, and you think you understand it, and it's only later you realize that the truth is different.
Okay: no prizes for observation so far.
Sometimes, on the other hand, you look at something and you know already it's not the way it seems. You know because you understand what you"re seeing, you"re aware of the context and you realize that appearances are being deceptive.
But sometimes, and this is the important sometimes, that's wrong.
Sometimes, when you think you"re being deceived, you"re not. Sometimes things are the way they look, however surprising that may be. And sometimes that can make all the difference in the world.
Let me put it another way. Why does a journey always seem quicker coming back?”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“What happened to the truth is not recorded.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot