You wouldn't believe that so much could change just because a relationship ended.

There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while.

There were about seventy-nine squillion people in the world, and if you were very lucky, you would end up being loved by fifteen or twenty of them.

You had to live in your own bubble. You couldn't force your way into someone else's, because then it wouldn't be a bubble any more.

It struck him that how you spent Christmas was a message to the world about where you were in life, some indication of how deep a hole you had managed to burrow for yourself

Reciprocation was a pretty powerful stimulant to the imagination.

What good were real feelings anyway?

That was his mother. When she wasn't crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.

he was home on his own and listening to the sort of music he needed to listen to when he felt like this, music that seemed to find the sore spot in him and press up hard against it...

Will wrestled with his conscience, grappled it to the ground and sat on it until he couldn't hear a squeak out of it.

...he didn't know if he was Chuang Tzu who dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu.

Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.

Sir, I had rather be right than to be President.

Yet verily these issues lie on the lap of the gods.

I'm now the Lord of the Brighton Manor.

Be careful, then, and be gentle about death. For it is hard to die, it is difficult to go through the door, even when it opens.

Anyone would be lying if they said they didn't get lonely at times.

In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for the château, and while every village here contains at least severalgentlemen or "squires," there is but one to a seigniory.

The beginnings of all things are small.

I'm still very much a Christian and have a great relationship with God. I love Him, but one of my flaws is that I cuss.