“The protagonist, Amanda, discusses her sex relationship with her husband, John Paul --As long as it's done with honesty and grace, John Paul doesn't mind if I go to bed with other men. Or with other girls, as is sometimes my fancy. What has marriage got to do with it? Marriage is not a synonym for monogamy any more than monogamy is a synonym for ideal love. To live lightly on the earth, lovers and families must be more flexible and relaxed. The ritual of sex releases its magic inside or outside the marital bond. I approach that ritual with as much humility as possible and perform it whenever it seems appropriate. As for John Paul and me, a strange spurt of semen is not going to wash our love away.”

“At John Schlesinger's funeral at a synagogue in St John's Wood some years ago the person I stood next to said to me encouragingly, 'Come on, Stephen - you're not singing. Have a go!' 'Believe me, Paul, you don't want me to,' I said. Besides, I was having a much better time listening to him. 'No. Go on!' So I joined in the chorus. 'You're right,' Paul McCartney conceded. 'You can't sing.”

“I grabbed Lexi’s tousled head and kissed her hair. She smelt like John-Paul Gaultier and blood.”

“Marriage," "mating," and "love" are socially constructed phenomena that have little or no transferable meaning outside any given culture. The examples we've noted of rampant ritualized group sex, mate-swapping, unrestrained casual affairs, and socially sanctioned sequential sex were all reported in cultures that anthropologists insist are monogamous simply because they've determined that something they call "marriage" takes place there. No wonder so many insist that marriage, monogamy, and the nuclear family are human universals. With such all-encompassing interpretations of the concepts, even the prairie vole, who "sleeps with anyone," would qualify.”

“After John gave his little speech to the orchestra, he turned to Paulie and said, "What do you think, mate? Are you with me or not." Paul said, "Not. You're on your own." John said, "No, I'm not on my own. You're with me. I was being rhetorical. It wasn't a question." Paul said, "Yes, it was. You said, 'Are you with me or not?' You started your sentence with the word 'are'. By definition, any sentence with the word 'are' at the beginning of it is a question." John said, "That's not necessarily true. I didn't upturn my voice, and if there's no upturn, there's no question.”

“Yes: but aren't love and marriage notoriously synonymous in the minds of most women? Certainly very few men get the first without promising the second: love, that is--if it's just a matter of spreading her legs, almost any woman will do that for nothing.”