"The artist says to the cosmos: All I ask is infinite love-is that so very wrong? And the cosmos doesn't even bother to respond."
- John Lanchester
"Humans make their own history, but not under circumstances of their choosing."
"Petunia only ever went to the doctor reluctantly, and her motive in doing so was always the same: she did it in order to feel less anxious about things. The doctor was supposed to make the worry go aw..."
"Although he too was heading to work, Shahid was glad he wasn't dragging himself off to some office job. Shahid's view: anybody who had to wear a suit to work died a little inside, every day."
"It gave her a sudden sense that it was now her turn to grow old, to find the world changing, sliding away from the old ways of being and behaving, so that you were gradually a stranger to the place yo..."
"As Confucius says, under some circumstances murder can be forgiven; but unreasonableness never is."
"In Shahid's view, the best way through difficult times, as through life in general, was just to go along with things. It was a rare problem that couldn't be solved by being ignored."
"It’s as if people used the invention"
"of seatbelts as an opportunity to take up drunk-driving."
"You heard people say forty was the new thirty and fifty was the new forty and sixty was the new forty-five, but you never heard anybody say eighty was the new anything. Eighty was just eighty."