I always thought the girl in that picture had the look of a frog about her, Nancy said, thinking, I look enigmatic because I’m dying. Isn’t
Human nature favors the tribal. Tribalism engenders violence. It was ever thus and so it will ever be.
How many times would he disappoint you in a day if you were married to him, Ursula wondered?
He was a baby once, she thought. New and perfect, cradled in his mother’s arms. The mysterious Sylvie. Now he was a feathery husk, ready to blow away. His eyes were half open, milky, like an old dog,...
He preferred solitary pursuits, and being a member of a group seemed rather dutiful, but he could do dutiful and somebody had to or the world would fall apart.
Happiness, like life itself, was as fragile as a bird’s heartbeat, as fleeting as the bluebells in the wood,
Get down,' Bunty says grimly. 'Mummy's thinking.' (Although what Mummy's actually doing is wondering what it would be like if her entire family was wiped out and she could start again.)
Dr. Kellet himself wore a three-piece Harris tweed suit strung with a large gold fob watch. He smelled of cloves and pipe tobacco and had a twinkly look about him as if he were going to toast muffins...
She had married him in order to be safe from the chaos. He had married her, she now understood, for the same reason. They were the last two people on earth who could make anyone safe from anything.
I think about death a lot, I really do, because I can't believe I won't exist. It's the ego isn't it? I feel that I should retreat into a better form of Zen Buddhism than this kind of ego-dominated th...
…she was just like everyone else, she wanted to love someone. Even better if they loved you in return.
Quoting Elizabeth I. Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.
Dystopia, a reliably clean, well-lighted place.
When she was little they had lived in an old farmhouse too, in the middle of nothing of but landscape.
Twittering just seemed to be people telling other people what they were doing--getting in the shower, making coffee. Who on earth wanted to know these things?...Babble and twitter. Full of sound and f...
Time isn’t circular, she said to Dr. Kellet. It’s like a… palimpsest.
They were both Filipino and laughed no matter what you said. Were the Philippines really such a happy place or were the carers just happy not to be there?
They said love made you strong, but in Louise's opinion it made you weak. It corkscrewed into your heart and you couldn't get it out again, not without ripping your heart to pieces.
The future was coming nearer, one relentless goose step after the next. Juliet could still remember when Hitler had seemed like a harmless clown. No one was amused now. (The clowns are the dangerous o...
The Grim Reaper, Gloria corrected herself - if anyone deserved capital letters it was surely Death. Gloria would rather like to be the Grim Reaper. She wouldn't necessarily be grim, she suspected she...