We know so little about each other. We lie mostly submerged, like ice — Ian McEwan

"You want a picture of futility? Its a tunnel in the desert, from nowhere to nowhere, four hundred and fifty feet long."

"This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing."

"Who you get, and how it works out - theres so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your unconscious choice of mate, that no one and no amount of talking can untangle it if it turns out unhappily."

"On a recent Sunday evening, Theo came up with an aphorism: the bigger you think, the crappier it looks. Asked to explain he said, "When we go on about the big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks really terrible, with nothing getting better, nothing to look forward to. But when I think small, closer in – you know, a girl Ive just met, or this song were going to do with Chas, or snowboarding next month, then it looks great. So this is going to be my motto – think small."

"How can one understand the inner life of a character, real or fictional, without knowing the state of her finances?"

"Nations are never virtuous, though they might sometimes think they are."