Either we’re all ordinary, or else none of us is ordinary.

He knows very well what underlies the compulsive side of his nature; it is the wish to escape that which he can’t comprehend, seeking safety in an unbendable estrangement.

It can be seen as a discussion of the nature of evidence – the way in which there is no single truth about anyone’s life, but as many truths as there are observers.

Learning to skip has brought control into her life. Whenever she feels at all sad she switches into this wholly happy gait, sliding, hopping, and sliding again; when doing this, it seems as though her head separates from her body, making her feel dizzy and emptied out of bad thoughts. Does anyone else in the world know this trick, she wonders. Probably not, though her mother sometimes waves at her from the window, waves and smiles.

Despair did not suit her looks. Goodness cannot cope with badness – it’s too good, you see, too stupidly good.

I remember that I did feel, starting my mini-tour, the resident anxiety you develop when you know you’ve been too lucky; at any moment, maybe next Tuesday afternoon, I would be stricken with something unbearable.

The larger loneliness of our lives evolves from our unwillingness to spend ourselves, stir ourselves. We are always damping down our inner weather, permitting ourselves the comforts of postponement, of rehearsals.

It’s like concentrating on your own breath: once you start thinking about the air rushing in and out of your body, your breath has a way of getting stuck in your throat so that you understand how easy it would be to fall down and die.

A thought comes into her head: that lately she doesn’t ask herself what is possible, but rather what possibilities remain.

I was the breakable one. Women always are. It’s not so much a question of one big disappointment, though. It’s more like a thousand little disappointments raining down on top of each other. After a while it gets to seem like a flood, and the first thing you know you’re drowning.