"...what is romance, but a mutual pact of delusion? When the pact ends, there's nothing left."
- Zoë Heller
"But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened f..."
"All my life I have been the sort of person in whom people confide. And all my life I have been flattered by this role - grateful for the frisson of importance that comes with receiving important infor..."
"He had made a fairly unambiguous pass at her, as she was getting out of the cab. But event that had come to nothing. Sheba said that she had sensed something resentful about him, as if he begrudged he..."
"But that I should have ended up in a place like this seems too custom-made a nightmare to be the work of mere ill fortune."
"I don't cook anything fancy. Sheba's appetite isn't up to much and I've never been one for sauces. We eat nursery food mainly. Beans on toast, Welsh rarebit, fish fingers. Sheba leans against the oven..."
"It seems to me that my lack of faith is not, as I once thought, a triumph of the rational mind, but rather a failure of the imagination - an inability to tolerate mistery."
"It's clear that politeness to one's elders can't always be justified on the basis of the elder's superior wisdom. It's just that it's not attractive to see a young person answering an older person bac..."
"We are bound by the secrets we share."
"There are certain people in whom you can detect the seeds of madness - seeds that have remained dormant only because the people in question have lived relatively comfortable, middle class lives. They ..."