“That's emails for ya: sometimes they're like an arrow that hits so deep in the target, you can't pull it out.”

“You don't understand. Speaking, talking--language, that is--represents the most orderly, civilized, and rational expression of human nature. All this foul-mouthed cussing is a gap where you can't think of anything to say. It's the opposite of being rational and ordered. The very opposite. It wants to unpick civilized behavior, rationality, and order.”

“The mist hung in the air like a prancing unicorn.”

“She couldn't see him, but his voice was like light through a stained-glass window in a cathedral.”

“He looked like a once-green leaf that had begun to dry and to reveal the structure of its veins.”

“What I mean is this: you meet someone, you think about them. You're already changing because of the way you think about them. You meet them again, you think about them some more, you're changing again. And on it goes. You are changing right now. Before my eyes.”

“They were an end-of-days couple, not naked in a garden but wrapped in layers in a snow-covered landscape where there were no more apples on the trees and women would no longer have to take the blame because the old lie had been covered over by snow.”