I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.

It's an apathy so absolute that it's like a hole you might fall in.

I first foreswore motherhood when I was about eight years old. ... [Children] were annoying. We were loud and sneaky and broke things. As an eight-year-old, maybe I was simply mortified by the prospect of being saddled with myself.

it is always difficult to impress the ignorant.

That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable.

Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't.

Now, bitterly, with one sweep of the front door, the compassion was spent. To the degree that Lawrence's face was familiar, it was killingly so - as if she had been gradually getting to know him for over nine years and then, bang, he was known. She'd been handed her diploma. There were no more surprises - or only this last surprise, that there were no more surprises. To torture herself, Irina kept looking, and looking, at Lawrence's face, like turning the key in an ignition several times before resigning herself that the battery was dead.