A man can go from being a lover to being a stranger in three moves flat but a woman under the guise of friendship will engage in acts of duplicity which come to light very much later. There are different species of self-justification.

Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.

Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.

That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.

The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.

Life... is not simply a series of exciting new ventures. The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.

You can never betray the people who are dead.