“After my daughter was born, I’d considered buying a shotgun to ward off potential suitors fourteen or so years up the road. Now, as I listened to these girls babble and imagined Gabby one day talking with the same banality and ignorance of the English language, I thought of buying the same shotgun to blow my own fucking head off.”

“It was not an exclamation so much, I think, as it was a warding off, an exertion of language upon ignorance and disorder.”

“An unprovoked head butt is like bringing a sawed-off shotgun to a knife fight.”

“Tanks are so big and expensive they should be Buy One Get One Free. If they were, I’d buy 60 of them (I’d save up my allowance money).”

“To-morrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame.”

“On the day of the party I walked down to Covent Garden at lunchtime to buy a dress, and on my way to Boules I thought I would just stop off for a moment at Books etc.”