“People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.”

“Beneath the kiss itself, it is its meaning that interests us—which is why the desire to kiss someone can be decisively reduced (as it may need be, for instance, when two lovers are already married to other people) by a declaration of that desire—a confession which may in itself be so erotic as to render the actual kiss superfluous.”

“Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief.”

“The more people you have to ask for permission, the more dangerous a project gets.”

“Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.”

“The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.”

“Public life is debased because it's only the nice people who are worried about imposing their views on others.”