“When she bought the cats her mother asked her straight out if they were 'baby substitutes'. 'No,' Ruth had answered, straight-faced. 'They're kittens. If I had a baby it would be a cat substitute.”

“It was nostalgic in that painful way nostalgia could be”

“We cannot escape the longing, no matter what life we choose. Were either longing for people, places or times gone by, which are essentially the same things: memories. And, whether or not we travel,...”

“What seems real one moment is fiction the nextand gone out of existence the moment after that.Nostalgia is the greatest enemy of truth,and change our only constancy.”