“Art, I subsequently realised, is like that. It softens by association and implication. It renders the hard pliable. It creates gaps, gaping holes really, in possibility.”

“And yet, in terms of its emotive potential, I still find art more attractive, currently, than books, which fail at a deeper level.”

“Sometimes the heart demands.”

“I regret, most of all, my shrivelled heart. So focused on the numbers. On the maths of my personal equation. Can a man change his heart? Are there ways to improve the spirit of who you are? Of why ...”

“The writers themselves … they were pitifully out of context. So self-assured, so assuming, so completely wrong. Unable – any of them – to imagine what might be coming.”

“We are, after all, human. There is something wild in those opposable thumbs.”

“The words I Love You kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.”

“It wasn't a thing I had consciously missed, but having it now reminded me of the joy of it; that drowsy intimacy in which a man's body is accessible to you as your own, the strange shapes and textu...”

“his yellow eyes gazed at me possessively -- I wondered if he realized that the way he looked at me was far more intimate than copping a feel could ever be.”