At the beginning, there had been talk of using some of her money to start a home for alcoholics. In some sense they had succeeded.

During lunch David felt that he had perhaps pushed his disdain for middle-class prudery a little too far. Even at the bar of the Cavalry and Guards Club one couldn't boast about homosexual, paedophiliac incest with any confidence of a favourable reception.

It was never quite clear to Eleanor why the English thought it was distinguished to have done nothing for a long time in the same place, but David left her in no doubt that they did. He also descended from Charles II through a prostitute.

He wore his dark glasses to protect him from surprises.

After all, what redeemed life from complete horror was the almost unlimited number of things to be nasty about.

No pain is to small if it hurts, but any pain is too small if it's cherished.

The compulsion to repeat what one has experienced is like gravity, and it takes special equipment to break away from it.

...how nearly inevitable it is for those who have been terrified to become terrifying once they have the opportunity.

Anne felt guilty at first that she reacted so badly to Vijay's appearance. His oyster-coloured complexion and the thick jowls that looked like a permanent attack of mumps were the unhappy setting for a large hooked nose with tufts of intractable hair about the nostrils. His glasses were thick and square but, without them, the raw dents on the bridge of his nose and the weak eyes peering out from the darker grey of their sockets looked worse. His hair was blow-dried until it rose and stiffened like a black meringue on top of his skull.

Whenever she thought of what she was meant to say, it seemed to dash around the corner, and lose itself in the crowd of things she could not say.