“Fiction had never been Jackson's thing. Facts seemed challenging enough without making stuff up. What he discovered was that the great novels of the world were about three things - death, money and sex. Occasionally a whale.”

“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.”

“Twittering just seemed to be people telling other people what they were doing--getting in the shower, making coffee. Who on earth wanted to know these things?...Babble and twitter. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

“After Marlee was born they rented videos and fell asleep in front of them. Now, like so much else in Jackson's world, videos were obsolete.”

“On the outside of the bedroom door there was a plaque that said Valerie. On the way up, Jackson noticed that other bedrooms also had names - Eleanor, Lucy, Anna, Charlotte.Jackson wondered how you decided on a name for a room. Or a doll. Or a child, for that matter. The naming of dogs seemed even more perplexing.”

“He wondered what a visitor from the past would make of it. It used to be the poor who were thin and the rich who were fat, now it seemed to be the other way round.”

“This Jackson bloke was the ruddy Scarlet Pimpernel, here, there and everywhere, always one step ahead of Barry. And everywhere he went, women were disappearing.”