Anna Karenina is just a story about a woman falling in love with a bloke who is not her husband. Its gossip, rubbish - on the other hand, its the deepest story there could be about social transgression, about love, betrayal, duty, children.

Like you, she will have been with other people, but I've got a feeling there's something between you.

...I love 'yes.' It's practically the most interesting word of all, don't you think?" Like a hinge opening a door outward. Yes, yes, yes.

The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it; anything more than that is advertising.

Without love, most of life remains concealed. Nothing is as fascinating as love, unfortunately.

You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them.

Watching Jamila sometimes made me think the world was divided into three sorts of people: those who knew what they wanted to do; those (the unhappiest) who never knew what their purpose in life was; and those who found out later on. I was in the last category, I reckoned, which didn't stop me wishing I'd been born into the first.