Somebody has been a complete ratbag all their life and they've gotten away with it, and they die happy and rich, we so much want to believe that they're going off to the halls of judgment, that their heart will be weighed against the feather of truth, that it will be heavy with sin and it will be eaten by a crocodile. It's almost essential to our well-being to have a fallback position like that. It may appear as if you've gotten away with it, but you'll pay for it later.

he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different.

Money as such is, as Oscar Wilde said, perfectly useless. You can't eat it, drink it, shelter yourself from the cold with it, wear it, or make love with it unless deeply disturbed. In and of itself, it has no emotions, no mind, and no conscience. It doesn't put out flowers or have children, and it makes a lousy pet. It has meaning only when it circulates, and is exchanged for other things; and money doesn't do that for itself. People do that, using money as a symbolic token.

She had no images of this love. She could offer no anecdotes. It was a belief rather than a memory.

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

But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.

There is more than one kind of freedom," said Aunt Lydia. "Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.