“Sitting around miserable all day won't make you any happier.”

“Neither your mother nor I have any imagination at all and we certainly didn't bring you up to have one”

“Bruno: Why do you wear pajamas all day?Shmuel: The soldiers. They took all our clothes away.Bruno: My dad's a soldier, but not the sort that takes people's clothes away. ”

“There were others, such as Jack London,who offered their readers such a respite from the miserable horror of existence that their books were like gifts from the gods. (Character of Tristan Sadler in "the Absolutist")”

“The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you've found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of the cupboard.”

“I think perhaps the adults we become are formed in childhood and there's no way around it.”

“The last image I had of her was her sitting on the platform at Thorpe as a group of people stared at this distressed, weeping woman, and then her charging towards the glass of my window seat as the train pulled out of the station. I had gasped, thinking she meant to throw herself under the wheels, but no, she had simply wanted to attack me, that was all. If she had got her hands on me, she might have killed me. And I might have let her.”