“It is, you must concede, unpleasantly messy, this business of having feelings, this mattering to each other. I've always thought of it as gory, a sort of perpetually occurring road accident - everyone going too fast, too close, without due care and attention, or with too much . . .”

“The yeehaw explanation is we're too busy chasing meat'n'pussy.”

“but it was humanly good to be touched too, to be alone with someone at the secret feast that went all the way back to Adam and Eve. You looked at each other and felt just how old the contract was, the warm-faced commitment to the adventure, the stepping together out of the light into the rewarding darkness.”

“Once you've stopped loving someone breaking his or her heart's just an unpleasant chore you have to get behind you. My God, you really don't love me anymore, do you? No matter your decency the victim's incredulity's potentially hilarious. You manage not to laugh.”

“The collective human unconscious can't stand it, the thought of stuff going on forever, so has decided (collectively, unconsciously) to bring the planet to an end. Eco-apocalypse isn't accident, it's deep species strategy.”

“She turned towards me, put her fingertips against my chest. She was enjoying it somewhat, too, the little betrayal of Mark's memory. She still loved him, differently; now and again there must be these retrospective cruelties, to consolidate her newness, to let her not love him in the old way.”

“You can't blame me. I mean that literally. You're incapable of blaming me. You're human. Being human is choosing freedom over imprisonment, autonomy over dependency, liberty over servitude. You can't blame me because you know (come on, man, you've always known) that the idea of spending eternity with nothing to do except praise God is utterly unappealing. You'd be catatonic after an hour. Heaven's a swiz because to get in you have to leave yourself outside. You can't blame me because -- now do please be honest with yourself for once -- you'd have left, too.”