“I would not wish to marry someone who had already been married. It would be,' she opined, 'like having someone else break in one's own pony.”

“Belinda stared into the fire for some time, thinking about what she had in her life, and what she had given up; and whether it would be worse to love someone who was no longer there, or not to love someone who was.”

“I felt like someone who'd been informed that she wasn't actually a hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening.”

“The world is always ending for someone. It’s a good line. I give it to the father of the child. He says it to his wife. ‘The world is always ending for someone,’ he says. She is trying to quieten the baby, and does not hear him. I doubt that it would matter if she did.”

“This book started like this.My son, who is called Michael or Mike these days, but was Mikey back then, was angry at me. I'd said one of those things that parents say, like «isn't it time you were in bed», and he had looked up at me, furious, and said, «I wish I didn't have a dad! I wish I had...» and then stopped and thought, trying to think of what one could have instead of a father. Finally he said «I wish I had goldfish!»”

“For a moment he thought she was about to hit him, which would have been bad, or even start crying, which would have been much, much worse.”

“I felt very much like a hooker who had just been told she was a lady of the evening.”