Oh, this coming back to an empty house,' Rupert thought, when he had seen her safely up to her door. People - though perhaps it was only women - seemed to make so much of it. As if life itself were not as empty as the house one was coming back to.

How absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself. Everybody should try it.

Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things - enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn't matter which.

It was odd how one found oneself making trivial conversation on important occasions. Perhaps it was because one could not say what was really in one's mind.

There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.

The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things . . . the trivial pleasure like cooking, one's home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard.

Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there.