“The NRA was laying down its weapons. Yankee fans were rooting for the Boston Red Sox. The French were eating English food and loving it. Matthew was sure all those things were happening.... This was the proverbial cold day in hell, and Matthew was living it.”

“There are only two types of people who can be totally honest with each other, lovers and strangers. Everyone else is just negotiating.”

“Branson ate his salad, and left the rest of his fish untouched, while Grace tucked into his steak and kidney pudding with relish. 'I read a while ago,' he told Branson, 'that the French drink more red wine than the English but live longer. The Japanese eat more fish than the English but drink less wine and live longer. The Germans eat more red meat than the English, and drink more beer and they live longer too. You know the moral of this story? 'No''It's not what you eat or drink - it's speaking English that kills you.”

“All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.”

“If the screams of all earth's living creatures were one scream of pain, surely it would shake the stars.”

“If all the days and nights in the world were to cease to be, I still hold that we were meant to meet and to love and to know the pain of violent disillusion.”

“We need only in cold blood ACT as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real.”