“I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.”

“He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is."Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?”

“The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.”

“I wonder if childhood is ever really happy. Just as well, perhaps. To be blissfully happy so young would leave one always seeking to recapture the unobtainable. Like those people who were always happiest at school or university. Always going back. No reunion ever missed. It always seemed to me rather pathetic.”

“But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?""That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.”

“I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.”

“Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.”