And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice - based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudices and muddled folk wisdom - how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!

A very powerful theme in fiction is that of loss.

Self-pity does not appreciate pedantry.

She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.

It would be wonderful to have a guru; it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received.

The point about love, the essential point, was that we loved what we loved. We did not choose. We just loved.

The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.