Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.

When you're young - when I was young - you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality. Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become. You want them to tell you that things are OK. And is there anything wrong with that?

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

Women were brought up to believe that men were the answer. They weren't. They weren't even one of the questions.

If these are indeed the spirits of Englishmen and Englishwomen who have passed over into the next world, surely they would know how to form a proper queue?

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.