“Mama was amazing like that; I spent most of my teenage years assuming that she knew nothing about me, and all of my twenties realizing that she knew everything.”

“The odd thing about Mama was that she liked to think of herself as a doomy sort of person, but there was a natural optimism in her that refused to be defeated, however hard she squashed it down, and I know that she never lost faith completely.”

“As he started 'Whisky and Gin' and the cheering and the shrieking filled my senses, I thought of Mama, shattered by the war and Papa's death and I wished with all my heart that she could understand how it felt to be us that night - how it felt to be eighteen and unbeaten, eighteen and alive.”

“Like all intelligent people, she functions very well in extreme disorder.”

“One would never write a single word if one knew the horrors that lay ahead,’ agreed Charlotte.‘But if you sell copies by the sackload, you may well forget the horrors,’ I agreed quickly.”

“I didn't hear you come in. I was away with the ghosts of my beautiful youth.”

“Would it ever, ever leave? I had become used to the ache now; it was with me all the time, and never seemed to lessen. Time was no healer, I decided, but it was a great accommodator.”