“Each morning the light came through the slats of the shutters in ripples, and as it washed towards the inhabitants of the Casa Luna it smoothed away memories of the past, It was for this that they ...”

“Every profession is an island whose inhabitants earn a precarious living by taking in each others washing.”

“He had heard the voice of London that lives and breathes beneath the rumble of traffic, a voice like the continual high-pitched shriek you hear when you put your head beneath the waves of the sea. ...”

“Mostly, what people mean by love is laziness.”

“Novelists, said Ivo, are to the nineties what cooks were to the eighties, hairdressers to the seventies and pop-stars to the sixties Merely, you know, an expression of the Zeitgeist, Nobody actuall...”

“A hundred years ago, people had perfectly understood that you could die of a broken heart, now they thought you were making a fuss about nothingCertain kinds of suffering are like radiation: they c...”

“Lucian's father had warned him to fear idle men. Without the pride gained from a good day's work, they were left to their vices and the doubts that crowded their head. Their hatred. Their envy.”

“She was wearing her fuzzy pink hat and she was happy, which was so obnoxious. She'd become one of those people who waltzed through life without so much as a split end, and I was still one of those ...”

“We may be just a drop in the ocean, but even the ocean envies the depth of our love.”

“I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest -- blest beyond what language can express because I am my husband's life as fully as he is m...”

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

“When a woman thinks her husband is a fool, her marriage is over. They may part in one year or ten; they may live together until death. But if she thinks he is a fool, she will not love him again.”

“If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way with...”

“When we are at peace within our marriage, the effects can be astounding! We will raise happier children, become better employees, and overall find the joy in life.”

“Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There's no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere.”