Nothing that can be, can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes.

Four or five years - nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown up and how unchanged I was.

No one knew about the squirrel’s skull beneath Briony bed, but no one wanted to know.

A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.

Rebecca Goldstein is a rare find among contemporary novelists: she has intellectual muscle as well as a tender emotional reach.

I like to think that it isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair.

At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that it had already happened.