“We manufacture anger to give ourselves the illusion of power when we feel weak and helpless.”

“Weak people always attack strong people - it's safer. It's weak people who are dangerous, who lash out uncontrollably and hurt you back. Stong people can walk away - no repercussions, you see, if you attack a stong person.”

“You can always, and easily, give somebody the gift of hope and faith, even in the midst of despair.”

“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?”

“What they'd got was a fat, balding academic who bandied about the phrase "family annihilation", especially when there were cameras pointed at him, and mentioned the titles of books and articles he'd written to anyone who would listen; who blatantly thought he was the mutt's nuts, as Sellers had so aptly put it.”

“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. ”