I couldn't help wondering, is my husband so unattractive that no woman has ever wanted him? Except me, of course. I must have wanted him, in a way, once, but I've forgotten why, and I was too young to know what I was choosing.

They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.

She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.

In the taxi I let my hand lie on her leg like a promise, but I had no intention of keeping my promise.

Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.

A brain is only capable of what it could conceive, andit couldnt concieve what it hasnt experienced

All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.