“Before the beginning is the void and the void belongs in neither time nor space and is therefore beyond our imagination.Nothing will come of nothing unless it's the beginning of the world. This is how it begins, with the word and the word is life. The void is transformed by a gigantic firecracker allowing time to dawn and imagination to begin.”

“The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.”

“Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.”

“In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.”

“You said five little words to someone--How can I help you?--and it was as if you'd mortgaged your soul out to them.”

“Julia's vocabulary was "chock-full" of strangely archaic words - "spiffing," "crumbs," "jeepers" - that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls' annual rather than in Julia's own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion.”

“You could guarantee a decent cup of coffee in Betty's, but it went beyond the decent coffee and the respectable girls (and women) who had been parcelled up some time in the 1930s and freshly unwrapped this morning. It was the way that everything was exactly right and fitting. And clean.”