Andrew had a gift for deepening the incision he began.

That is the trouble with happiness-all of it is built on top of something that men want.

your culture has become sophisticated, like a computer, or a drug that you take for a headache. You can use it, but you cannot explain how it works. Certainly not to girls who stack up their firewood against the side of the house.

[My maternal grandmother ] was a teacher in London and elsewhere during the war, although the children she taught were not the "lost children" who feature in the novel - those come from my research.

This is the forked tongue of grief again. It whispers in one ear: return to what you once loved best, and in the other ear it whispers, move on.

I’m telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of the world.

That is how we lived, happily and without hope. I was very young then, and I did not miss having a future because I did not know I was entitled to one.