The nicest characters in A Week in December research are, in fact, Muslims - and their religious devotion is one of the things that defines them.

I don't find life unbearably grave. I find it almost intolerably frivolous.

One of the hardest things about being alive is being with other people.

Oh, the sweetness of giving in, of full surrender.

The thunder of false modesty was deafening.

I suppose that each of us may have a great moment in our life, a month, a week a year, when we are most fully what we are meant to be

Memory is the only thing that binds you to earlier selves; for the rest, you become an entirely different being every decade or so, sloughing off the old persona, renewing and moving on. You are not who you were, he told her, nor who you will be.