Dearest Cecilia, You’d be forgiven for thinking me mad, the way I acted this afternoon. The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I don’t think I can blame the heat.

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

No emergency was ever dealt with effectively by democratic process.

He saw that no one owned anything really. It's all rented, or borrowed. Our possessions will outlast us, we'll desert them in the end.

At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.

If life was a dream, then dying must be the moment when you woke up. It was so simple it must be true. You died, the dream was over, you woke up. That's what people meant when they talked about going to heaven. It was like waking up.

She lay in the dark and knew everything.