He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is." Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?

Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.

I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.

gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give.

A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.

There is no point in regretting any part of the past. The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.

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