“She turned towards me and narrowed her eyes...narrowed them horizontally, not vertically.”

“Happiness is the twinkle in your grandmother's eye as you reverse the tractor off her legs.”

“We went through all the usual exchanges dictated by Hollywood and polite society. She tried to scream and bite the palm of my hand, and I told her to be quiet because I wasn't going to hurt her unless she shouted. She shouted and I hurt her. Pretty standard stuff, really.”

“I didn’t really know the answer to this myself, but saying that wasn’t going to get me off the hook. I started talking without any clear idea of what was going to come out. ‘Because sex causes more unhappiness than it gives pleasure,’ I said. ‘Because men and women want different things, and one of them always ends up being disappointed. Because I don’t get asked much, and I hate asking. Because I’m not very good at it. Because I’m used to being on my own. Because I can’t think of anymore reason.’ I paused for breath.‘All right,’ said Ronnie. She turned and started walking backwards so she could get a good view of my face. ‘Which of those is the real one?’‘B,’ I said, after a bit of thought.”

“Now, my mom always said two wrongs don't make a right. But she never said anything about four wrongs, and that always left me confused.”

“Newton's Third Law of Conversation, if it existed, would hold that every statement implies an equal and opposite statement. To say that I'd turned the offer down raised the possibility that I might not have done.”

“Of course, they hadn’t really been happier at all. But they ‘d been days, and they’d had Sarah in them, and that was near enough.”