“Conn was a wickedly passionate, fiercely dominant man who loved her too much to ever really hurt her.”

“Life's too short not to spend every waking moment doing something you love.”

“I didn't fall off the hay truck yesterday, buddy. I want you to go down there and try to boink some sense into her.”

“I'm really sorry, Jess, but she's going to have to have your room.''My room?' exploded Jess. 'There's a perfectly good spare room upstairs!''Yes, but you see, darling, Granny can't manage stairs quite so easily anymore. Since Grandpa died and she had that fall, you know- well, her house is too much for her to manage on her own. [...] Granny has to be on the ground floor, love. She can use the groundfloor loo, and we'll convert the old coal shed at the back into a bathroom.'Jess was too furious to speak. No, wait, she wasn't. 'Where am I supposed to sleep then?' she snapped. 'Out on the pavement?”

“Never trust a man who dresses too well or stays too clean. It ain't natural and whatever he's up to probably ain't legal.”

“I hate nature. I really do. Nature is composed entirely of sticks, dirt, fall-down places, biting and stinging things, and savageries too numerous to list. And I'm not the only one who feels this way. Man has been building cities since the year oughty-ought, just to get away from this stuff.”

“Jess actually dreaded having a boyfriend, because of having to tell her mum. Perhaps she would just avoid it until her mum eighty or something and in an old-people's home, and then Jess, who would by then be about fifty, would drop by and casually remark, "Oh, by the way, Mum, I've got a boyfriend." And even then her mum would probebly hurtle out of her wheelchair and smack her hard across the face, crying "You trash! You whore! Get outta my house--I mean, my room!" It was hard sometimes, being the daughter of a radical feminist who hated men. ”