“Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.”

“He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.”

“History: the lies of the victors, the self-delusions of the defeated.”

“For most of us, the first experience of love, even if it doesn’t work out – perhaps especially when it doesn’t work out – promises that here is the thing that validates, that vindicates life. And though subsequent years might alter this view, until some of us give up on it altogether, when love first strikes, there’s nothing like it, is there? Agreed?.”

“When I was going out with her, it always seemed that her actions were instinctive. But then I was resistant to the whole idea that women were or could be manipulative. This may tell you more about me than it does about her. And even if I were to decide, at this late stage, that she was and always had been calculating, I’m not sure it would help matters. By which I mean: help me.”

“What does the novel do? It tells beautiful, shapely lies which enclose hard, exact truths.”

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