“Sometimes there was the pure, primal pain of grief, and other times there was anger, the frantic desire to claw and hit and kill, and sometimes, like right now, ther was just ordinary, dull sadness...”

“You okay, Mum?" said Rob."I'm fine," said Rachel. She went to reach for her cup of coffee and found that she didn't have the energy to even lift her arm.”

“Why hadn't that been part of his stupid lifelong redemption program: Do what my wife asks immediately so she doesn't feel like a nag.”

“Polly had arrived in the world outraged to discover that her sisters had gotten there before her.”

“Then he kissed her so deeply and so completely that she felt like she was falling, floating, spiraling down, down, down, like Alice in Wonderland.”

“It seemed to her everyone had too much self-protective pride to truly strip off down to their souls in front of their long-term partners. It was easier to pretend there was nothing more to know, to...”

“There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.”

“Oblivion, she thought. That was the world she lived in. It was what they should name some countries, towns, and places.”

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'Quite often men are fools.”

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”

“If this man had not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow.”

“There are only 2 paths to happiness in life. Utter Stupidity or Exceptional Wealth.”