“Where is the pain when your pride is wounded? And why do we say that: wounded? There is no gash, no blood, not even a scratch. Which part of us hurts? The brain cells? The neurons? What, for goodness' sake, what?”

“...nothing more excruciating when you are fighting for your life than to have healthy people round you, squabbling over futilities. Who do you love best, and who most do you want with you? Blithering idiots: it's life itself, can't you see? It's life I love best, and life I want with me. Go hang yourselves, all of you, you're only sapping my strength when most I need it. Leave me in peace and let me grapple.”

“Even the biggest blaze, though, has to start somewhere, with a tiny spark, or arsonists would be out of business.”

“Sabine used to maintain that preparation for a dance is comparable to what goes on in the back room of a butcher's shop: the meat for consumption is sliced and dressed and put in nice little paper packages, ready for the kitchen.”

“An hour would be enough. An hour with my head on the pillow beside yours, foreheads touching, eyes locked with eyes (just the two of us, mind you, minus that sodding cat); an hour to smell the smell of you - garlic and all, I wouldn't mind, no, I wouldn't mind. An hour to press you close the whole length of our bodies and feel the shudder of your laugh. An hour to tell you I'm so glad I knew you. An hour, just an hour. I have time now like hedgehogs have fleas: I an lose it, waste it, squander it, kill it, and there will still be more to follow, but that hour I'll never have. Never.”

“Where is the pain when your pride is wounded? And why do we say that: wounded? There is no gash, no blood, not even a scratch. Which part of us hurts? The brain cells? The neurons? What, for goodness' sake, what?”

“...music, music, records, records, noise to cover silence.”

“Obscenity is a function of culture - a function in the mathematical sense, I mean, its value changing with that of the variables on which it depends.”

“Shape? Does a fog have shape? Does the twilight? Does the onset of darkness?”

“Love is that as well, I was forgetting: it is taking a huge gamble, staking your all on a single improbable throw, jumping off a cliff and trusting an unknown person to catch you before you hit the ground.”

“Sickening, the way the youngest de Vibrey girl, to humour the whim of her kinky old father, is actually riding side-saddle today. Twisted round like a blooming corkscrew. Hymen be blowed, think of what it's doing to her innards, poor wretch, think of the strain on her spine when she goes over the fences.”