“Young men ... learn practical skills that set is in good stead for lives as the husbands of wealthy and educated women: Strong Handshakes, Silence, Rudimentary Car Mechanics, How to Mow the Lawn, E...”

“Im never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on the map into a place where a we...”

“So she quit working to make sense of things we dont realise it, but its hard work we do almost every waking moment, building out thoughts and memories and actions around time, things that happened ...”

“He honestly expected her to believe that she could make a bad offering and her ancestors wouldn't mind.”

“[i]We were fighting so very hard and achieving so very little aside from staying alive. BUT THATS EVERYTHING, my father wrote to me, when I told him that in a letter.[/i]”

“What do you want, Mary Foxe? My husband?" I believe in him," she said slowly. I wondered if shed ever told him that, and if so, what he had to say about it. Someone you made up turns around and tel...”

“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for t...”

“You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?'I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore...”

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying youre friends is easy. Being friends is not.”

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”