A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.

He resented such questions as people do who have thought a great deal about them. The superficial and slipshod have ready answers, but those looking this complex life straight in the eye acquire a wealth of perception so composed of delicately balanced contradictions that they dread, or resent, the call to couch any part of it in a bland generalization. The vanity (if not outrage) of trying to cage this dance of atoms in a single definition may give the weariness of age with the cry of youth for answers the appearance of boredom.

What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial - or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.

The tuba is certainly the most intestinal of instruments, the very lower bowel of music.

Mrs Thicknesse and I agreed that a business of his own was probably the only solution for him because he was obviously unemployable.

I suppose I shall marry eventually One does that, one drifts into stability

All couples must bear the strain of getting acquainted, having been, up to then, merely intimate.