“When had all this conformity and sameness set in? How had it happened? When had the varied carols turned into a single corporate advertising jingle?”

“Everything that had happened was all part of the same great big something, it had to happen, I just knew”

“It's easy to assume people are conforming when we witness them all choosing the same option, but when we choose that very option ourselves, we have no shortage of perfectly good reasons for why we just happen to be doing the same thing as those other people; they mindlessly conform, but we mindfully choose. This doesn't mean that we're all conformists in denial. It means that we regularly fail to recognize that others' thoughts and behaviors are just as complex and varied as our own. Rather than being alone in a crowd of sheep, we're all individuals in sheep's clothing.”

“The conversation had turned again to those moments, by now enriched by a private mythology, when they first set eyes on each other”

“Will had never wanted to fall in love. When it had happened to friends, it had always struck him as a peculiarly unpleasant-seeming experience, what with all the loss of sleep and weight, and the unhappiness when it was reciprocated, and the suspect, dippy happiness when it was working out.”

“How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.”