“Being nice to that woman is like feeding a baby shark so it can grow big enough to eat you.”

“It was scary to need another person as much as you needed your next breath. It implied a need for unlimited faith and trust. You had to believe your love would be there for you always.”

“Hunter he had these big tins of crushed pineapple that he'd gotten from the army,' Garcia said, 'and i had this glove compartment full of plastic spoons, and we had this little cooperative scene, eating this crushed pineapple day after day and sleeping in the cars and walking around.”

“I'm a good enough person to forgive you, and you should be a good enough person to not do it again.”

“What Dad taught me above all else, and did so utterly unconsciously, was why people like him became Tories. He had been poor. He was working class. He aspired to be middle class. He worked hard, made it on his merits, and wanted his children to do even better than him. He thought – as did many others of his generation – that the logical outcome of this striving, born of this attitude, was to be a Tory. Indeed, it was part of the package. You made it; you were a Tory: two sides of the same coin. It became my political ambition to break that connection, and replace it with a different currency. You are compassionate; you care about those less fortunate than yourself; you believe in society as well as the individual. You can be Labour. You can be successful and care; ambitious and compassionate; a meritocrat and a progressive. These are entirely compatible ways of making sure progress happens; and they answer the realistic, not utopian, claims of human nature.”

“you have to be able to answer those questions plainly and clearly. There can be qualifications and “get-outs,” but the answers must remain comprehensible, because they define you. They add up to a political, not merely personal, character. This requires thought, detailed analysis and intellectual rigour. Politics is a far more intellectual business than is often realized. You may think: Well, if it’s simplicity that’s required, you don’t need a whole lot of detail. Wrong. The simplicity is not born of superficial analysis. It is simple precisely because it is the product of being worked through.”

“She was afloat in bliss, grateful that she had a woman's body to tell him what words could not.”