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“... Apple’ and ‘sheep’: of the five words the neurologist asked me to remember the first time I saw him I still remember two. Remember these words, he said to me at the beginning of the exam. And at the end of the exam, about twenty minutes later, he asked me to recite them back to him. The truth is, I had memorised them by silently repeating them to myself throughout the exam ...”

“... the female, she sometimes tells me, he wouldn’t cut it in the wild. Still, as the narrator of Sigrid Nunez’s novel The Friend says, ‘people will tell you anything about their cats and dogs.’ The Friend has a dog, man’s best friend, on the cover. A Great Dane called Apollo plays an important part in the novel, and it makes skilful use of the ...”

“... in things that do not truly grip them … their seriousness and total immersion in play’. Sigrid Nunez would ‘rather spend an afternoon hanging out with someone’s kids than with many adults I know’. Danielle Henderson boasts, ‘I always engage children on their level,’ which, if true, is quite an achievement. Pam Houston is proud of her ...”

“... Philip Roth with only a photograph of Kafka for company. Moser reiterates what memoirists such as Sigrid Nunez (Sempre Susan), Phillip Lopate (Notes on Sontag), Edmund White (City Boy), Gary Indiana (Utopia’s Debris) and others recorded first-hand: that Sontag was incapable of spending much time alone, even when writing. These were not cosy evenings ...”