1
Novelists, ’ said Ivo, ‘are to the nineties what cooks were to the eighties, hairdressers to the seventies and pop-stars to the sixties… Merely, you know, an expression of the Zeitgeist, Nobody actually reads novels any more, but it’s a fashionable thing to be a novelist — as long as you don’t entertain people of course. I sometimes think, ’ said Ivo, his eyes like industrial diamonds, ‘that my sole virtue is, I’m the only person in London who has no intention of writing any kind of novel, ever.Amanda Craig
2
A hundred years ago, people had perfectly understood that you could die of a broken heart, now they thought you were making a fuss about nothing… Certain kinds of suffering are like radiation: they cause furious growth and mutation of the inner self.Amanda Craig
3
Each morning the light came through the slats of the shutters in ripples, and as it washed towards the inhabitants of the Casa Luna it smoothed away memories of the past, It was for this that they had endured long hours in the grey English winter or freezing American climes, for this that they had worked and planned and worked extra hours/ The horrible feelings of stress, tension, anger and frustration that coursed through their veins every day almost unnoticed began to fade.Amanda Craig
4
Every profession is an island whose inhabitants earn a precarious living by taking in each other’s washing.Amanda Craig
5
He had heard the voice of London that lives and breathes beneath the rumble of traffic, a voice like the continual high-pitched shriek you hear when you put your head beneath the waves of the sea. It is the sound of millions and millions of creatures living and struggling and dying and being born. It commands those who hear it to eat or be eaten..Amanda Craig
6
Mostly, what people mean by love is laziness.Amanda Craig
7
There was a certain usefulness in having a husband whom most people could barely tolerate: it deflected envy, for one thing.Amanda Craig
8
Very happy or unhappy, people disappear.Amanda Craig
9
Just about the worst thing an artist can do is to try and be a nice person.Amanda Craig
10
Polly was all too aware that much of her time on holiday would be spent doing the laundry and the cooking and the child-care and all the other chores that back in London would be shared with her cleaning lady. A holiday with Theo and the children represented two weeks of domestic and maternal drudgery.Amanda Craig
11
Hatred bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.Amanda Craig