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

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.

Who you get, and how it works out - there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your conscious choice of a mate, that no one and no amount of talking can untangle it if it turns out unhappily.

Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?

Finally, you had to measure yourself by other people - there really was nothing else. every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone taught you something about yourself.

By measuring individual human worth, the novelist reveals the full enormity of the State

When its gone, you'll know what a gift love was. you'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.