Faye Weldon

“Mary Fisher lives in a High Tower, on the edge of the sea: she writes a great deal about the nature of love. She tells lies.”

“Worst fears: That God was not good. That the earth you stood upon shifted, and chasms yawned; that people, falling, clutched one another for help and none was forthcoming. That the basis of all things was evil. That the beauty of the evening, now settling in a yellow glow on the stone of The Cottage barns, the swallows dipping and soaring, a sudden host of butterflies in the long grasses in the foreground, was a lie; a deceitful sheen on which hopeful visions flitted momentarily, and that long, long ago evil had won against good, death over life... in the glow of the sun against the stone walls, as well as in the dancing of butterflies- that in this she had been mocked.”

“When you're with a man, no one tells you he's a creep; they don't like to; they think, well, that's her choice, perhaps ours isn't up to much either; how will we ever be sure, in this polite world? In other words, as we all know, one woman's creep is another's true love, and just as well.”