“I worry sometimes that we're apt to confuse forgiveness with forgetfulness. The potency of forgiveness comes precisely from the fact that it must be done while being goaded by an unhappy memory.”

“And she does not feel jilted, even one year on. Ben was weak or, fatal combination, weak and good. Jilting implied, if not malice, then aforethought and he was considerate to a fault and not a planner. As he had confessed all those months ago he was not the powerful one in his marriage, not when Chloe was near enough to influence him.As the weeks wore on laura realisedthat whatever offstage battle had taken place, she had lost. Chloe might not love him more, but her love it seemed, had proved the most tenacious. And, who knew, perhaps she had surprised them both with her strength of feeling. Perhaps it had taken such a crisis for him finally to fall in love with her and he had woken to the novel wonder of her as a man returning from a fever would be astounded at the mundane pleasure of grapes or daisies.”

“Like all their peers they went about things in the reverse order to the practice of their parents generation. They had sex, realised they got on really well then fell in love.”

“Sometimes, when the dust settles, you realize it's really not as bad as you thought it was.”

“I'm glad tomorrow's a new day 'cause I really messed this one up.”

“Sometimes forgiveness is a tough thing to muster up. And forgetting? Well, you have to find the forgiveness first. Hopefully the forgetting will come...with time.”

“The wonderful thing about self-worth is that only you can judge its true value.”