“But we’ll stumble on, she and I, into our messy future. And we’ll have each other”

“Simon would disapprove, in the way that people who lacked life experience always disapproved of others having adventures they had so far missed out on. ”

“I never do enjoy my breaks, long or short...I look forward to them intensely, but as soon as they begin, I can feel them starting to end. I feel the temporariness of my freedom, and find it hard to concentrate on anything other than the sensation of it trickling away.”

“She was irritated, briefly, by the thought that she might be becoming more mature. Why should she become a better person when no one else did?”

“Too much self-esteem, thought Simon: the real curse of our age.”

“No attack is ever really an attack on the victim. It's the perpetrator attacking an aspect of himself that he loathes. He or she.”

“He wondered how many new starts a person was entitled to, how many times one could say it was the other person's fault and truly believe it.”