“Among other things a marriage is a system of belief, a story, and though it manifests itself in things that are real enough, the impulse that drives it is ultimately mysterious.”

“I can see us there still," he said, "for those were moments so intense that in a way we will be living them always, while other things are completely forgotten. Yet there is no particular story att...”

“The world is constantly evolving, while the family endeavours to stay the same. Updated, refurbished, modernised, but essentially the same. A house in the landscape, both shelter and prison.”

“I didn't appear to need anyone: I could do it all myself. I could do everything. I was both halves: did that mean I was whole?”

“As it happened I was no longer interested in literature as a form of snobbery or even of self-definition I had no desire to prove that one book was better than another; in fact, if I read somethin...”

“So much is lost, he said, in the shipwreck. What remains are fragments, and if you don't hold on to them the sea will take them too.”