“Jessica put out her hand and braced herself against the door jamb. She experienced one of those rare moments when understanding of the world alters and a previously impossible thing is admitted, if not understood.”

“The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances.”

“Every minute of his life since then has been marked by her absence, every action has lacked dimension because she is not there to measure against. And when I was young I didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.”

“As I penetrate Clare she looks at me and I think I don’t exist and a second later she turns her head and sees me. She cries out, not loudly, and looks back at me, above her, in her. Then she remembers, accepts it, this is pretty strange but it’s okay, and in this moment I love her more than life.”

“Elspeth stood in the sun, letting it pour through her, watching the Kitten sleep. I want you. Elspeth felt depressed. She had never thought of herself as someone who would kill a beautiful white kitten while it napped. But apparently she was that sort of person. Don't you worry, Kitten. I'll put you right back.”

“When I am dead, stop waiting and be free. Of me — put me deep inside you and then go out in the world and live. Love the world and yourself in it. Move though it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.”

“You didn’t answer my question. I asked you about being in love. You said what it was like when your wife went away.”Martin sat down again. How young she is. When we were that young we invented the world, no one could tell us a thing. Julia stood with her hands clenched, as though she wanted to pound an answer out of him. “Being in love is…anxious,” he said. “Wanting to please, worrying that she will see me as I really am. But wanting to be known. That is…you’re naked, moaning in the dark, no dignity at all…I wanted her to see me and to love me even though she knew everything I am, and I knew her. Now she’s gone, and my knowledge is incomplete. So all day I imagine what she is doing, what she says and who she talks to, how she looks. I try to supply the missing hours, and it gets harder as they pile up, all the time she’s been gone. I have to imagine. I don’t know, really. I don’t know any more.”