“Life if curious when reduced to its essentials”

“I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.”

“It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?”

“I have arranged my little life.”

“It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.”

“The rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.”

“I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any. ”