You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.

The fact that my clothing has been visually available to other people I do not find upsetting. The body is another matter. It is mine; I have found it useful; but it is an avatar.

You can't be stylish and petty at the same time.

Worse, the deadly accuracy of filial faultfinding is facilitated by access, by trust, by willing disclosure, and so constitutes a double betrayal.

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

How lucky we are, when we're spared what we think we want!

A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship, it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help.