“I'd never chosen to be alone, but that was the way things had turned out, and I'd grown used to it.”

“That sense of happiness just out beyond my reach - I'm not sure I'd grasped that exactly, but I'd got something close to it, contentment maybe, or at least a functioning routine with regular rewards.”

“I'd become more adept at being with other people; I'd lowered my expectations of them and learned to let my mind drift into neutral when they spoke.”

“They're so attached to their patterns that they've forgotten rule number one of human behavior: there are no patterns. People just do things. There's no such things as a coherent and fully integrated human personality, let alone consistent motivation.”

“Have you ever been lonely? No, neither have I. Solitary, yes. Alone, certainly. But lonely means minding about being on your own. I've never minded about it.”

“Depression - that limp word for the storm of black panic and half-demented malfunction - had over the years worked itself out in Charlotte's life in a curious pattern. Its onset was often imperceptible: like an assiduous housekeeper locking up a rambling mansion, it noiselessly went about and turned off, one by one, the mind's thousand small accesses to pleasure.”

“One thing about London is that when you step out into the night, it swallows you.”