After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?

After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?

People aren't quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They're not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different.

The fantasy never got beyond that—I didn’t let it—and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.

All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.

Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy.

There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.