“Pam wasn't what Gloria would have called a friend, just someone she had known for so long that she had given up trying to get rid of her.”

“Get down,' Bunty says grimly. 'Mummy's thinking.' (Although what Mummy's actually doing is wondering what it would be like if her entire family was wiped out and she could start again.)”

“Mum had a Charles-and-Diana wedding mug that had survived longer than the marriage itself. Mum had worshipped Princess Di and frequently lamented her passing. "Gone," she would say, shaking her hea...”

“But I know nothing; my future is a wide-open vista, leading to an unknown country - The Rest Of My Life.”

“In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.”

“What would I put in my bottom drawer? I would put only sharp objects, the clean lines of broken glass, the honed steel of paring knives, the tiny saw-teeth of bread knives and the soothing edges o...”

“The sight of a worm excites my reverence more than all the gods men have invented.”

“For the natural polytheist, whose gods arise in and from the natural material world ... Our gods not only have transcendent eyes and metaphysical hands. They have antlers and feathers, hooves and s...”

“I sing to you of many more gods, gods of wind and water, gods of each mineral and the events that created them. I sing to you of the gods of protons, of quarks, of atomic forces binding and holding...”