I definitely know that-that love is the most powerful thing of all and I remember thinking that-God, I'm about to make myself cry but, I remember thinking that when 9/11 happened because those last phone calls were about-the last thing knowingly, that I'm going to say on this earth is 'I love you.' What's more powerful than that? What's more proof than that? Beyond fear, beyond death.

It is one of the most hauntingly beautiful places in the world, the history is fascinating, the men are handsome and the whisky is delicious. But don't eat the macaroni pies.

She seemed to think that one of the perks of marriage was that it gave you rights of comment and intrusion over single people's love lives.

Cobbled streets and no shops open past six o'clock, a communal life that seemed to revolve around church, and where you could often hear bird song and nothing else: Gaia felt as though she had fallen through a portal into a land lost in time.

Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

On and on they flew, over the countryside parceled out in patches of green and brown, over roads and rivers winding through the landscapes like strips of matte and glossy ribbon.

She's as nutty as squirrel poo.