Read a book at the right age and it will stay with you for life.
You should visit the Palatine. It's at the top of that hill . . ." "I know where the Palatine is, Dexter, I was visiting Rome before you were born." "Yes, who was emperor back then?
There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same - you couldn't just soak it up and then squeeze it out again.
He swatted at her with his book. "Shut up and read, will you?" He lay back down and closed his eyes. Emma glanced over to check that he was smiling, and smiled too.
It would be inappropiate, undignified, at 38, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour or intensity of a 22 year old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry? Crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photobooths? Taking a whole day t...
All his words and actions would now be fit for his daughter’s ears and eyes. Life would be lived as if under [her] constant scrutiny. He would never do anything that might cause her pain or anxiety or embarrassment and there would be nothing, absol...
Self-pitying, self-righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she always needed the most.
No-one ever built a statue of a critic.
I'm just not going to do it so that we can say that we've done it. And I'm not going to do it if the first thing you say afterwards is 'please don't tell anyone' or 'let's forget it ever happened'. If you have to keep something secret it's because yo...
He wanted to live life to the extreme, but without any mess or complications. He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun a...
And there it is again, the look. There's no doubt about it, if Sylvie had a receipt, she would have taken him back by now; this one's gone wrong. It's not what I wanted.
Letters, like compilation tapes, were really vehicles for unexpressed emotions and she was clearly putting far too much time and energy into them.
There is a point in the future where even the worst disaster starts to settle into an anecdote.
Keep the change," he smiled. Was there ever a more empowering phrase than "Keep the change"?
A moment passed, perhaps half a second when their faces said what they felt, and then Emma was smiling, laughing, her arms around his neck.
If you're my friend I should be able to talk to you but I can't, and if I can't talk to you, well, what is the point of you? Of us?
Maybe we've grown out of each other.
I'm just not prepared to be treated like this anymore.' 'Treated like what?' She sighed, and it was a moment before she spoke. 'Like you always want to be somewhere else, with someone else.
No, friends were like clothes: fine while they lasted but eventually they wore thin or you grew out of them.
Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead? It was unrealistic to expect a friendship to last forever…
