“Martha was a clever girl, and therefore not a believer.”

“Discovering, for example, that as witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. [p. 65]”

“The better you know someone, the less well you often see them (and the less well they can therefore be transferred into fiction). They may be so close as to be out of focus, and there is no operating novelist to dispel the blur. ”

“His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion.”

“I don't believe in God, but I miss him.”

“wear flannel next to your skin, and never believe in eternal punishment.”

“Women were brought up to believe that men were the answer. They weren't. They weren't even one of the questions. ”