“Nothing was to be lost by beginning at the beginning...”

“Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality”

“He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.”

“There's a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of a general state of longing, a hunger for life to begin that from this distance seems like happiness.”

“It marked the beginning and, of course, an end. At that moment a chapter, no, a whole stage of my closed. Had I known, and had there been a spare second or two, I might have allowed myself a little nostalgia.”

“In fact, as I get older, I begin to feel that actually what we need more in the world is doubt; more skepticism, less crazed certainty. . . . People who know the answer and are going to impose it on everybody else, I think, are terrifying people.”

“She was like a bride-to-be who begins to feel her sickening qualms as the day approaches, and dares not speak her mind because so many preparations have been made on her behalf the happiness and convenience of so many good people would be put at risk.”