Moments of kindness and reconciliation are worth having, even if the parting has to come sooner or later.

Row, row, row your boat. Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

Luck took me right out of myself - I read it in one gulp, and it never let me down. Sharp and surprising but always responsible, no tricks for tricks' sake; so satisfying, with its shifting and puzzles. So much fiction turns out to be diversion, in spite of fancy claims, and doesn't really look at anything. Well - this does.

She keeps on hoping from a word from Penelope, but not in any strenuous way. She hopes as people who know better hope for undeserved blessings, spontaneous remissions, things of that sort.

People’s lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable – deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum.

One stroke of lightning does not have to lead anywhere, but to the next stroke of lightning.

You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations.