“See if you can spot the difference between these two statements:(a) «Those trousers make your backside look fat.»(b) «You're a repellently obese old hag upon whom I am compelled to heap insults and derision — depressingly far removed from the, 'stupid, squeaky, pocket-sized English women,' who make up my vast catalogue of former lovers and to whom I might as well return right now as I hate everything about you.»Maybe the acoustics were really bad in the dining room, or something.”

“Mostly, however, we've got it smooth and efficient now. We don't have to think. She says, 'What are you doing?', I peer at her with irritation and expel air, we go on about our business. This morning, though, she came upstairs to the attic here while I was sitting in front of the computer doing some work on the net.'What are you doing?' she asks.Trying to concentrate on something, distracted and harassed, I reply with some degree of acerbic aggravation.'What does it look like I'm doing?'There's a beat, during which we hold each others eyes, unblinking.It's immediately after this beat has passed that I realize I'm wearing no trousers.”

“There is, it's opulently redundant of me to add, a perfectly reasonable and innocuous explanation for why I'm browsing the web alone in my attic with no trousers on, but you're all busy people and I know you have neither the inclination nor the time to waste hearing it. As an image, however, it did rather undercut my sarcasm. Margret — in a brutally savage reversal of tactics — didn't speak. She merely raised her eyebrows and there, revealed, was a face that read, 'I have been waiting thirteen years for this moment.”

“She wants to paint the living room yellow. I have not the words.”

“The annoying thing about time is that it takes time...but no amount of it is enough when you are waiting to be sure. Time alone can tell you what will last.”

“No, no, no, no, no. Sex should not be fun, okay? Sex can be lots of things - thrilling, romantic, scary, mindless, dirty, dangerous, frantic, forbidden, freaky - but if you're finding it 'fun,' you're doing it wrong.”

“my academic career was indifferent to the point of beauty- I was so unremarkable, in every way, that the unvarying precision of my mediocrity achieves a kind of loveliness”