A picnic may well be a metaphor for life. The essentials for happiness are the right company, moderate if sanguine expectations and a reasonable standard of physical sustenance and comfort, the whole being bedeviled by the belief that there is always something better to be had if only one presses on.

The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity.

Perfect love may cast our fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.

But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?" "That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.

[My father and his friends] believed in equality for women without troubling to acquire the basic domestic skills which would have made that equality possible.

Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one.

you'd like the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That must be the most futile oath anyone ever swears.