What I like about limousines is they have tinted windows, so no-one can see if you’re snogging in the back seat.

Mrs Downs, a large sad lady who described herself, to Rupert’s delight, as bulky but fragile, now came four mornings a week to clean the house. She was one of those people who habitually looked on the black side of everything with a cheerfulness that bordered upon the macabre.

It was foolish to indulge in elaborate preconceptions: anticipation was a featherweight, doomed to compete with the inevitable, convincing bulk of reality. The trouble was that one had to face reality without knowing beforehand precisely what it was to be. One had somehow to discover and tread the hard, between the sloughs of fearing the worst and hoping for the best.

I have lived my life in the slipstream of experience.

Charity groped for the phone, coming up with it at last and croaking “hello” in a voice that sounded exactly like a bullfrog’s mating call. Which made a kind of twisted sense – last night she’d been hunting for a mate as well.

Love is neither a conditional business nor an ever-fixed mark arrangement. People always know somewhere inside them if they are not loved. No gestures, talk, conciliation, pronouncements can prevail over that deep instinctual knowledge.

The craze of genealogy is connected with the epidemic for divorce. If we can’t figure out who our living relatives are, then maybe we’ll have more luck with the dead ones.

Sir Humphrey’s stories about Africa made Charity feel exactly like one of his stuffed trophy heads – lifeless and glassy eyed. The only difference was that she usually ended up face-down, slumbering on the sofa, instead of hung up on the wall.

When you fall asleep after a big lunch you’re really just saving up energy to work off all the calories later on.

I’m not particularly keen on pity. Pity takes something away from grief. People think they’re sharing it, but really they’re just taking some. I prefer to keep my grief intact.