Olivia Laing

"At the age of 39 I was fairly sure I would spend the rest of my life alone. I lived alone, I worked alone. No matter what I did, or who I dated, I didn’t seem to be able to find the relationship I longed for. ... Ian was nearly three decades older than me, but all the same we quickly became friends. We were both passionate gardeners, and we’d take tours around our patches, pointing out the plants we were most proud of. ... We didn’t just love each other. We were in love with each other. We were the foundation of each other’s lives. We decided to get married that summer. Suddenly there was no time to waste. ... ... I used to worry I’d never meet anyone and now I live in terror of Ian’s death. He’s the same age as my parents; I know it’s likely that I’ll lose them all at around the same time, a loss so cataclysmic I can barely begin to fathom it. I worry about my sweet husband vanishing into the blind alleys of dementia. I worry about blood clots, bowel cancer, a heart attack, a stroke."

"… If some of England’s seemingly sublime gardens were economically dependent on the sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations of America and the West Indies, others were contingent upon the practice of , the legal process of taking the formerly open fields, commons and wasteland of the medieval period into private ownership."

"... If youre a writer who works in biographies, you discover that that the people youre writing about arent very nice. Not always. Sometimes theyre wonderful."

"... What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if were not intimately engaged with another human being? How do we connect with other people, particularly if we dont find speaking easy? Is sex a cure for loneliness, and if it is, what happens if our body or sexuality is considered deviant or damaged, if we are ill or unblessed with beauty? And is technology helping with these things? Does it draw us together, or trap us behind screens?"