“It is the storyteller's prerogative to try to write, every now and then, the ending she might wish for. Even if it exists only on the white page.”

“They are filled with earnest nonsense, the sort of things that a boy writes to his sweetheart, but which somehow, when they are meant for you, never feel tired or cliched or anything other than absolutely tender and true.”

“I lay in his arms and I understood. I am two women and I love two men. Elise will always love Kit and Alice loves Daniel. This was not the life or the love I had expected but it was love all the same.”

“Jack thought of his wife, filled with nothing but sorrow, wandering the earth remembering the dead and happier times.”

“I remember that Sunday with absolute clarity - it was one of those perfect June mornings that make one certain Eden was a summer's day in southern England.”

“I took a deep breath and filled my lungs with summer.”

“If wishes were free, pigs would fly.”