“Perhaps I'd been a slow developer, but I was well into my forties before I realized that you don't have to comply with a request just because it's reasonable or reasonably put. Age is the great dis-obliger. You can be yourself and say no.”

“Briony said reasonably, 'How can you hate plays?''It's just showing off.' Pierrot shrugged as he delivered this self-evident truth.”

“I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. Cee”

“It was the reason he had survived. It was the ordinary way of saying she would refuse all other men. Only you. Come back.”

“Something has happened, hasn't it? ... It's like being up close to something so large you don't even see it. Even now, I'm not sure I can. But I know it's there.”

“He knew these last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life. Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive.”

“But to do its noticing and judging, poetry balances itself on the pinprick of the moment. Slowing down, stopping yourself completely, to read and understand a poem is like trying to acquire an old-fashioned skill....”