You fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye

This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.

There are some virtues to not saying what you think all the time.

Falling in love, although it resulted in altered body chemistry and was therefore real, was a hormonally induced delusional state, according to him. In addition it was humiliating, because it put you at a disadvantage, it gave the love object too much power. As for sex per se, it lacked both challenge and novelty, and was on the whole a deeply imperfect solution to the problem of intergenerational genetic transfer.

We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we're so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil, and its derivatives, because it's not going to be around forever.

Teaching other people to write is not something I can do. The only kind of advice I can give them will be trite by its nature. Of course, read a lot, write a lot. The kind of advice I wish I had been given is all of a practical nature, having to do with publishers and agents.

I'm a fool, to confuse this with goodness. I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly.