“--a drive in the country, an expedition to a shoe shop a quiet cup of tea under a cloudless sky; each of us had something that made it easier to continue in a world that sometimes, just sometimes, was not as we might wish it to be.”

“The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.”

“Mrs. Moffat had taken her hand, for comfort, and they had sat there in silence for a while. Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, something broken in such a way that it might not be put together again; but the holding of hands, human hand in human hand, could help, could make the world seem less broken.”

“It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.”

“We don't forget.... Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which came back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are.”

“He took a deep breath. ‘To marry me,’ he said quietly. It was easier than he thought. Icarus did not fall from the sky; the ground did not open; the earth did not wobble on its trajectory.”

“Sometimes she thought that the people overseas had no room in their heart for Africa, because nobody had ever told them that African people were just the same as they were”