There were countless injustices and difficulties in this world, but small points of light too, where the darkness was held back.

Perhaps one should expect to be attended to by philosophers in Edinburgh delicatessens, just as one might be waited upon by psychoanalysts in the restaurants of Buenos Aires. Is the braised beef...

What is beauty, she thought, but the promise of happiness, as Stendhal said it was?

And the difference was this, she mused: those who are twenty don't know what it is like to be forty, whereas those who are forty know what it is like to be twenty. It was a bit like discussing a...

And here, she said to herself, is the victim of the witch hunt, or its modern equivalent. Not much has changed. Witchcraft or sexual harassment: the tactics of persecution were much the same - the...

And she, Isabel, had gone along with this and all the time what was happening was she was becoming increasingly possessive of Jamie without ever having to acknowledge it. Now there was another woman,...

It was always a mistake, she thought, to dwell on the cause of one's anger.

It's how we read the face, said Ian. Remember that you're talking to a psychologist. We like to think about things like that. It's a question of numerous little signals that create the overall...

If a man, waiting in a kind of vestibule for the moment of his birth, could choose his nationality, would it not be quite tempting to ask to be born an Italian?

If we were all responsible for the misdeeds of the governments that represent us, thought Isabel, then the moral burden would be just too great.

Resolution. Musicians know all about that, don't they? Pieces of music seek resolution, have to end on a particular note, or it sounds all wrong. The same applies to our lives. It's exactly the same.

The problem with being me, thought Isabel, as she walked along George IV Bridge, is that I keep thinking about the problem of being me.

She had been seized with a sudden existential horror. The house had white carpets and white furniture and, most significantly, no books.

Brother Fox looked in. He saw two people. He saw them raise their glasses of wine to him, liquid that for him was suspended in the air, as if by a miracle.

In an earlier age, it might have been possible to believe that goodness would prevail over pride, but not anymore. The proud could be proud with impunity, because there was nobody to contradict him in...

It just did not make sense; unless, of course, as she had suggested, we all have a weak point, an area of intellectual or emotional vulnerability that may be quite out of keeping with out character.

Chance; pure chance. But chance was a dull explanation because it denied the possibility of the paranormal, and people were often disappointed by dull explanations. Mystery and the unknown were far...

Isabel saw the intimacy of the gestures and felt immediately empty, a sensation so physical and so overwhelming that she felt for a moment that she might stop breathing, being empty of air

If we treated others with the consideration that one would give to those who only had a few days to live, then we would be kinder, at least.

Many waters cannot quench love: the anthem's setting remained in her ears, repeating itself; a tune so powerful that it might gird one against the disappointments of life, rather than make one aware...

People stuck by others for years and years, in the face of all odds, and it should be relief, not disbelief, that one felt on witnessing it.

Isabel had firm views on moral proximity and the obligations it created. WE cannot choose the situations in which we become involved in this life; we are caught up in them whether we like it or not....

But that's exactly the problem, retorted Isabel. We're all stuck with the same tired and trusted ideas. If we refused to entertain the possibility of something radically different, then we'd never...

Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom...

She was not sure if she would want him to have known; we do not always wish for those for whom we long to know that we long for them, especially if the longing is impossible, or inappropriate. . . to...

You have to leave your heart to get on with it. It's rather like breathing. We don't have to remind ourselves to breathe.

But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?