“It was a gusty day, and from the windows of Caroline's top-floor flat, only the sky was visible with its little hurrying clouds. It was a day when being indoors was meaningful, wasting an afternoon in superior confidences with a friend before the two-barred electric heater.”

“[My novel] took up the sweetest part of my mind and the rarest part of my imagination; it was like being in love and better. All day long when I was busy [...], I had my unfinished novel personified almost as a secret companion and accomplice following me like a shadow wherever I went, whatever I did.”

“Being in love is something like poetry. Certainly, you can analyze and expound its various senses and intentions, but there is always something left over, mysteriously hovering between music and meaning.”

“I never trust the airlines from those countries where the pilots believe in the afterlife. You are safer when they don't.”

“Sex is all right” he says“It’s all right at the time, and it’s all right before” says Lise, “but the problem is afterwards. That is, if you’re not an animal. Most of the time, afterwards is pretty sad.”

“The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.”

“It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.”