It seemed to me that the real philosophical breakthroughs of the 20th century were in terms of the understanding of language. What is language? Where does it come from, how does it work, what does it do?

For Mum, life was fundamentally hell. You went blind, you got raped, people forgot your birthday, Nixon got elected, your husband fled with a blonde from Beckenham, and then you got old, you couldn't walk and you died.

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

And silence, like darkness, can be kind; it, too, is a language.

Security and safety were the reward of dullness.

If jealousy was the vindaloo of love, I'd imagined her tongue burning, and such a fire forcing her to spill her truth.

How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.