“Jack and Jill slept, wrapped in each other's arms, untroubled by any dream in their cocoon of freshly discovered wrinkly passion.”

“She usually worked at night, claiming that the racket he made about the house distracted her during the day; she needed silence, total silence, in which to pursue her inspiration - else it fled awa...”

“The sun was up - stuck like half a tinned apricot on a sky awash with all the colours of a fading bruise. Down below the living dead were forming their complaining queues at bus stops.”

“She had six months at most left to live. She had cancer, she hissed. A filthy growth eating her insides away. There was an operation, she'd been told. They took half your stomach out and fitted you...”

“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”

“Let me tell ya. You gotta pay attention to signs. When life reaches out with a moment like this it's a sin if you don't reach back... I'm telling you.”

“The two go hand in hand like a dance: chance flirts with necessity, randomness with determinism. To be sure, it is from this interchange that novelty and creativity arise in Nature, thereby yieldin...”

“The best music I have ever heard is the sound of my daughters giggling.”

“... He spoke in the deep tenderness of one about to leave his treasure amid perils and foes, where his remembered words would be the only aid he could bequeath to guide her.”

“Her laughter was my favorite symphony.”