“There are moments. You will know them.”

“Those moments that we remember. The tiniest moments or parts of a moment - a tap of a nail against a mug or the sound of a man swallowing, or how the sweeping beam finds the kitchen walls and then leaves them. We count the seconds, he and I.”

“But maybe the best thing I learnt was this: that we cannot know a person's soul and nature until we've sat beside them, and talked.”

“We carry on. We have ourselves and we carry on- in spite of our losses and mistakes and women, I think, have more than most. We are good secret-keepers. We can tie weights to out guilt and passions, and hatred and deceitfulness, and let them sink down, so that you'd never know they existed at all. But we know. I can count all mine.”

“We have our stories, and we speak of them, and weave them into other people's stories - that's how it goes, does it not?”

“Is that why we give flowers? To express admiration? Sometimes. But there are other reasons. A symbol of love or of commiseration. A way of saying thank you. A mark of respect. Proof we like someone and want them to smile. And we put flowers on graves to say “Look, we still think of you. You've left a space behind.”

“Stories are thick with meanings. You can fall in love with a story for what you think it says, but you can't know for certain where it will lead your listeners. If you're telling a tale to teach children to be generous, they may fix instead on the part where your hero hides in an olive jar, then spend the whole next day fighting about who gets to try it first.People take what they need from the stories they hear. The tale is often wiser than the teller.”