“I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.”

While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave.

You’re the perfect girl’, he said, rubbing his chin. ‘You expect nothing.

He was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I’d always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph’s part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.

It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments.

I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.

Kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.

The stories themselves haunt, they stick around, they linger, inhabiting a little corner of the reader’s brain and resurfacing to evoke mystery or sadness or longing.

I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son.

The wine glasses are empty except for that one undrinkable red spot at the bottom.

Large meadows are lovely for picnics and romping, but they are for the lighter feelings. Meadows do not make me want to write.

But the sky is interesting, it changes all the time.

I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups.

If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness-cry and then walk-but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.

She is the first gesture that creates a quiet that is full enough to make the baby sleep. My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen.

That’s the thing with handmade items. They still have the person’s mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone.

The most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.

To tackle the big and relevant issues of the day with bold and innovative ideas is without question the most rewarding way to serve.

Wealth flows from energy and ideas.

I don’t like tokenism. I don’t like the idea that somebody should just appear at a press conference or in a media interview because they are a woman.

Nobody ever died of discomfort, yet living in the name of comfort has killed more ideas, more opportunities, more actions, and more growth than everything else combined. Comfort kills!

Many men ridicule the idea that it can be scientifically handled. They tell us the unemployed have always been with us, and always must be. It is the oldest reason in the world for tolerating injustice and misery.

I admire Peter Mandleson’s chutzpah and the way he transformed the Labour party but not his dubious ideas about Europe and industrial policy.

Sacredness of human life! The world has never believed it! It has been with life that we settled our quarrels, won wives, gold and land, defended ideas, imposed religions.

The free market is fundamentally humane and democratic, driven by ideas and millions of individual choices about what to do with our money which defy those who benefit from the status quo.