The real truth is that the war didn't have much to do with it except that it provided a perfect limbo in which two people who were too young and too related could start kissing without anything or anyone making us stop.

I don't get nearly enough credit in life for the things I manage not to say.

Osbert was the only one who didn't seem suspicious. He was so interested in the Decline of Western Civilization that he missed the version of it taking place under his nose.

She frowned at him. 'You are in love with solitude.' 'Is there a better cure for the world than solitude?

it was love, of course, though I didn't know it then and Finn was both its subject and object. He accepted love instinctively, without responsibility or conditions, like a wild thing glimpsed through trees.

While working in advertising, I channelled my creative energy into elaborate escape fantasies: cake making, dog breeding, the Peace Corps.

I, a late riser, fantasise about getting up every morning at 5 A.M. to fetch the horses in from the fields.