“It's not really much good tearing out a page because you can see the place where it's been torn. [...] You can pull a stamp out,' she said with terrible youthful clarity, 'and you don't know that it's ever been there.”

“Don't you believe it. I'll tell you what life is. It's gaol, it's not knowing where to get some money. Worms and cataract, cancer. You hear 'em shrieking from the upper windows- children being born. It's dying slowly.”

“It's a good world if you don't weaken.”

“cynicism is cheap - you can buy it at any monoprix store. it's built into all poor-quality goods.”

“They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.”

“I loved a man,"she said. "I told you - a man doesn't alter because you find out more about him. He's still the same man.”

“You don't bless what you love...It's when you want to love and you can't manage it. You stretch out your hands and you say God forgive me that I can't love but bless this thing anyway...We have to bless what we hate...It would be better to love, but that's not always possible.”