And where does religion come into it? Are Protestant countries inherently less corrupt? No, she said. I don't think it's that simple. The issue, I suppose, is whether a culture stresses telling the...

She was thinking of Mobile, where her mother-her "sainted American mother," as she called her-had spent her childhood. That was a place of shady streets; of moss that hung from the boughs of trees, as...

We become the people we live with. Imperceptibly at first, but with a certain inevitability, we become the other.

We assume so much, don't we? We assume that our children are going to be reasonable. We assume they're going to see things as we see them. And then suddenly we discover that they can look at things...

Like so many women, her life seemed to be all about the needs of others. Auden had said something about that, she reminded herself-something witty. We are here on this earth to help others, but he had...

The eyes are the window of the soul…it was such a well-worn adage, a cliché by now, but Isabel had read that neuroscience, which was validating so many intuitive, ancient beliefs about who we were...

Preserve' is an entirely suitable motto for a jam-making company," said one. "Marmalade and so on-I'm not so sure it's quite right for a firm of lawyers.

I'm glad you came," said Rob. "I like having lunch. I find it a much more sociable meal than dinner.

The trouble with having a conscience, she said to herself, is that it never sleeps.

There's a poem about onions," she said. "It's about how memory is like an onion-it makes you cry.

Waiting in the reception area, she had flicked through a news magazine that had been lying on the table for clients to read while waiting for their appointment. On the cover there had been a picture...

He evidently did not care that they were in full view of a cluster of dog-owners walking their dogs. He stopped and took her in his arms, kissing her passionately and urgently.

He smiled as he imagined the composite Jamie/Isabel, who would play the bassoon, read philosophy, interfere in other people's affairs rather too much, drive a green Swedish car and make legendary...

. . . there was something that Isabel had said that always stuck in his mind. Remember what you have and the other person doesn't. It was simple--almost too simple--advice and yet, like all such home...

What I said to you was private. We can have private reservations about a person's work, but that doesn't mean to say that we have to spell those out to him. It's called tact, Isabel!

Because laughs never die away entirely," said Jamie. "At least, if you believe in Marconi.

Isabel's private theory of moral proximity, the basis of those obligations that came into existence when we found ourselves close enough to others to be able to witness or feel their needs, or when we...

Animals, like people, did not ask to be who or what they were, and to make life difficult for others simply for being what they were seemed to her to be fundamentally unkind.