“I know some people today would regard such love of country as ridiculously romantic and naïve... Patriotism itself has been hijacked by scabby youths with jackboots and bad teeth whose sole aim is to raise their own standard of living. But I do believe that there are those few who continue to believe in the England that Kipling loved. Unfortunately, we are a dusty bunch of relics.”

“I believe there is a great deal too much mutual confession going on today, as if sharing one’s problems somehow makes them go away. All it really does, of course, is increase the number of people who have to worry about a particular issue.”

“I don't believe the greatest views in the world are great because they are vast or exotic,' she said. 'I think their power comes from the knowledge that they do not change. You look at them and you know they have been the same for a thousand years.”

“Unlike you, who must do a cost-benefit analysis of every human interaction," he said, "I have no idea what I hope to accomplish. I only know that I must try to see her. That's what love is about, Roger. It's when a woman drives all lucid thought from your head; when you are unable to contrive romantic stratagems, and the usual manipulations fail you; when all your carefully laid plans have no meaning and all you can do is stand mute in her presence. You hope she takes pity on you and drops a few words of kindness into the vacuum of your mind.”

“She looked at him and he read in her eyes a disappointment that he should have stooped to the dead relative excuse. Yet he was as entitled as the next man to use it. People did it all the time; it was understood that there was a defined window of availability beginning a decent few days after a funeral and continuing for no more than a couple of months. Of course, some people took dreadful advantage and a year later were still hauling around their dead relatives on their backs, showing them off to explain late tax payments and missed dentist appointments: something he would never do.”

“do you really know what it means to be in love with an unsuitable woman?" "Is there any other kind?”

“I know something of shame [...] How can we not all feel it? We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors. [...] I think we wake up every day with high intentions and by dusk we have routinely fallen short. Sometimes I think God created the darkness just so he didn't have to look at us all the time.”