In Leon's account of his life, no-one was mean-spirited, no-one schemed or lied or betrayed; everyone was celebrated at least in some degree... Leon turned out to be a spineless, grinning idiot.

I think the novel, its business is the investigation of human nature.

The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.

Arguing with a dead man in a lavatory is a claustrophobic experience.

She lay in the dark and knew everything.

I watched our friends' wary, intelligent faces droop at our tale. Their shock was a mere shadow of our own, resembling more the goodwilled imitation of that emotion, and for this reason it was a temptation to exaggerate, to throw a rope of superlatives across the abyss that divided experience from its representation by anecdote.

Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment's thought, and that would take time.