“My little Matthew, Isabelle at once snapped back at him, when two people agree, it means one of them is redundant”

“You read Salinger in Italian? Molto chic’‘I was told a good way to learn a language was to read translations of books you know by heart’‘That’s interesting.’But Isabelle wasn’t at all interested. She had just discovered a new expression. She savoured it amorously. From now on everything that once has been "sublime" – a film, a Worth gown, a Coromandel screen – would be "molto chic". Like those devotees of the increase-your-word-power column in the Reader’s Digest who stake their conversational reputation on the number of times in a single day they find room for "plethora" and "infelicity" and "quintessential", dropping these words the way other people drop names, she hated to let any amusing phrase go once it had caught her fancy.”

“There is fire and fire: The fire that burns and the fire that gives warmth, a fire that sets a forest ablaze and the fire that puts a cat to sleep. So is it with self-love. The member that once seemed one of the wonders of the world soon becomes as homely as an old slipper. Mathew and himself gradually ceased to excite each other.”

“And my Black bird, still not quitting, still is sitting, still is sittingOn that pallid bust -- still flitting through my dolorous domain;But it cannot stop from gazing for it truly finds amazingThat, by artful paraphrasing, I such rhyming can sustain--Notwithstanding my lost symbol I such rhyming still sustain--Though I shan't try it again!”

“Love is blind but not deaf.”

“You can’t just come out and say what you have to say. That’s what people do on airplanes, when a man plops down next to you in the aisle seat of your flight to New York, spills peanuts all over the place (back when the cheapskate airlines at least gave you peanuts), and tells you about what his boss did to him the day before. You know how your eyes glaze over when you hear a story like that? That’s because of the way he’s telling his story. You need a good way to tell your story.”

“The more that people share decisions affecting their working life, the more they are motivated to carry them out”