No time spent with a book is ever entirely wasted, even if the experience is not a happy one: there’s always something to be learned. It’s just that, every now and again, you can hit a patch of reading that makes you feel as if you’re pootling about. [...] But what can you do about it? We don’t choose to waste our reading time; it just happens. The books let us down.

Women who disapprove of men - and there's plenty to disapprove of - should remember how we started out, and how far we had to travel.

No man is an island.

But the internet had changed everything: nobody was forgotten anymore.

But then, that was the trouble with relationships generally. They had their own temperature and there was no thermostat.

On New Year's Eve he ould make a resolution to recover some his previous scepticism, but until then he would do as the Romans do, and smile at people even if he disapproved of them

You'll remember someone who broke your heart, and you'll think to yourself, 'Oh yes, I remember how that feels.' But you can't.