“And, in fact, this is the tale that I would love to write: history is such a romantic place, with its jarveys and urchins and side-buttoned boots. If it would just stay still, I think, and settle down. If it would just stop sliding around in my head.”

“I must console him for the distance we have moved from the place where he stopped.”

“There are long stretches of time when I don't know what I am doing,or what I have done - nothing mostly, but sometimesit would be nice to know what kind of nothing that was...”

“Because a mother's love is God's greatest joke. And besides - who is to say what is the first and what is the final cause?-that I was living my life in inverted commas. I could pick up my keys and go 'home' where I could 'have sex' with my 'husband' just like lots of other people did. And I didn't seem to mind the inverted commas...This is how we all survive. We default to the oldest scar.So I left the house with a howl of regret for all I had been denied, though there was nothing there I actually wanted. I wanted out of there, that was all. I wanted a larger life.My children are of a different breed. They seem to grow like plants, to be made of twig and blossom and not of meat.There are long stretches of time when I don't know what I am doing, or what I have done - nothing mostly, but sometimes it would be nice to know what kind of nothing that was...I try not to drink before half past five, but I always do drink - from the top of the wine bottle to the last, little drop. It is the only way I know to make the day end.”

“Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.”

“I have no place left to live but in my own heart.”

“And what amazes me as I hit the motorway is not the fact that everyone loses someone, but that everyone loves someone. It seems like such a massive waste of energy -- and we all do it, all the people beetling along between the white lines, merging, converging, overtaking. We each love someone, even though they will die. And we keep loving them, even when they are not there to love any more. And there is no logic or use to any of this, that I can see.”