“When you realize someone is trying to hurt you, it hurts less.""Unless you love them.”

“At first, there is something you expect of life. Later, there is what life expects of you. By the time you realize these are the same, it can be too late for expectations. What we are being, not what we are to be. They are the same thing.”

“Paul said, 'You always had some contempt for me.''Yes.''And love too.''Yes.' A flicker over her stare was the facial equivalent of a shrug. 'Now you have a wife to give you both.”

“Did you love Paul Ivory?""Yes.""I suppose it ended badly.""Yes.""You must have been very unhappy.""I died, and Adam resurrected me.”

“Yet decency nagged at their reluctant hearts; and they acknowledged that, too, in unconscious phrases -- 'I fail to understand...', 'I cannot bring myself to overlook...', 'Tolerance is all very well up to a point...' -- as if they had tried the ways of magnanimity but found them too exigent.”

“Women can be divided, more or less, into cows and shrews, and the shrews are to be avoided. [p. 74]”

“Caro was coming round to the fact of unhappiness: to a realization that Dora created unhappiness and the she was bound to Dora.”