“Miles was still mourning the loss of his Romantic Plan. 'There was going to be champagne, and oysters, and you' -- he held out both hands as though shifting a piece of furniture -- 'were going to b...”

“For a long moment, he held her gaze without speaking, simply letting the impact of words sink in, before adding rapidly, as though he wished to get it over with as quickly as possible, "I won't den...”

“Hard to believe that so nearby, just across the Channel, such atrocities could still occur in their supposedly civilized world, that one could wake up one morning and find oneself bereft of brother...”

“If a man took a lover it would be accounted commonplace. Why shouldn't you? Your virtue lies in your mind, not in what lies between your legs.”

“I love the sound of words, the feel of them, the flow of them. I love the challenge of finding just that perfect combination of words to describe a curl of the lip, a tilt of the chin, a change in ...”

“But that initial, comet-blazing-across-the-sky, Big Idea is only the beginning. Each book is composed of a mosaic of thousands of little ideas, ideas that invariably come to me at two in the mornin...”

“Then, one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you...”

“We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capa...”

“In part, that's because when we delay marriage, it's not just women who become independent. It's also men, who, like women, learn to clothe and feed themselves, to clean their homes iron their shir...”