“The pursuit of love seemed to need the cultivation of indifference.”

“He wanted pure compliments, just as he wanted unconditional love.”

“she kept sliding down, in small half-willing surrenders, till she was a heap, with the book held tiringly above her face.”

“She felt that at some point she must finally and formally talk to Louisa about Hubert, and ask her to acknowledge that the worst possible thing had happened to her as well.”

“On the stairs he was crying so much he hardly saw where he was going - not a mad boo-hoo but wailing sheets of tears, shaken into funny groans by the bump of each step as he hurried down.”

“Paul was blandness itself, just tinged with pink.”

“There was the noise itself, which he thought of vaguely as the noise of classical music, sameish and rhetorical, full of feelings people surely never had”