Oh, propriety," says Mrs Benjamin. "We're always so concerned with propriety. Even in total madness, we still stick to our hierarchies and chains of command.

No one does. No one really knows how to be happy. You just get close, sometimes. That’s all I want – just to be close.

The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope.

The older you get, the more voices you get in the back of your head.

Voters might have short memories. Politicians do not.

We all reconstruct our past because we wish to see how our present came to be our present - do we not?

They have forgotten that war is momentum.War is natural. And war makes one strong.

What a tremendous sin impatience is, he thinks. It blinds us to the moment before us, and it is only when that moment has passed that we look back, and see it was full of treasures.

...there is no better time to examine and understand one’s selfhood than when it is dissected and hurtling through darkness.

Here at the edges, in the cracks and at the crossroads, stepping from shadow to shadow in the river of darkness that runs through the heart of Wink, he feels much more at home.

And we convict almost every case, she thinks, because the law requires us to prosecute them for living their way of life.

She was not sorry. And if it was the wine telling her that, then she would tell the wine the same thing tomorrow. She was not sorry.

I have sometimes sacrificed freedom in order to belong, but more often I have given up all hope of belonging.

Number one, cash is king... number two, communicate... number three, buy or bury the competition.

For who can stop the heart from breaking?

A husband is a man who wishes he had as much fun when he goes on business trips as his wife thinks he does.

Winning doesn't always mean being first. Winning means you're doing better than you've ever done before.

You're supposed to trust friends. You have no reason to be his friend? That is part of the pleasure of friendship: trusting without absolute evidence and then being rewarded for that trust.

I've never been to Ireland and I've always wanted to go.

The best way to learn to be a lady is to see how other ladies do it.

And still everything’s the same, even though I did my best to get as far away as I could.