“Pam wasn't what Gloria would have called a friend, just someone she had known for so long that she had given up trying to get rid of her.”

“Get down,' Bunty says grimly. 'Mummy's thinking.' (Although what Mummy's actually doing is wondering what it would be like if her entire family was wiped out and she could start again.)”

“Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.”

“Mum had a Charles-and-Diana wedding mug that had survived longer than the marriage itself. Mum had worshipped Princess Di and frequently lamented her passing. "Gone," she would say, shaking her hea...”

“But I know nothing; my future is a wide-open vista, leading to an unknown country - The Rest Of My Life.”

“What would I put in my bottom drawer? I would put only sharp objects, the clean lines of broken glass, the honed steel of paring knives, the tiny saw-teeth of bread knives and the soothing edges o...”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”