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.

That sense of happiness just out beyond my reach - I'm not sure I'd grasped that exactly, but I'd got something close to it, contentment maybe, or at least a functioning routine with regular rewards.

It's better to have a malign providence than an indifferent one.

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

This is how most people live: alive, but not conscious; conscious but not aware; aware, but intermittently.

I think closeness to death would be pretty exhilarating in a way, and friendship, yeh, and selflessness, a kind of selflessness, a sense of your own worthlessness, I think, is pretty exhilarating.

If you have only one life, you cant altogether ignore the question: are you enjoying it?