"I really am interested but I find it hard to make the proper helpful noises. I'm terrible inadequate when it comes to sympathy. I feel things but I can't express them in words."

“I'd like to impregnate her with a warm smile, listen to my children call her "mummy", be a comfort to her in her old age.”

“The crowd pressed round the dais and the band broke into the national anthem. 'Broke into' was the wrong expression. They ransacked it. Stone closed his eyes and clenched his fists to stop himself laughing as the wailing brass savaged his eardrums.”

“It was always the same in my experience, the greatest libertines make the most suspicious fathers, and show me a mother who would part her legs for a dray horse and you will find her daughter has a chastity belt before a christening mug. Why they deny their progeny what they find so pleasant themselves I will never conceive.”

“One day, thought Stone, there will be a war and when you get to the front you will last five minutes before someone puts a bullet in your back.”

“The moneylender and his wife," he said indifferently, jerking his head over his shoulder. "It is always the same in any revolution. The moneylenders are always the first to go.”

“Every day, thought Stone, is a revelation. At night it seems that you will never see it again, that it has been lost in the darkness. But with the sun, you hold your breath and look, and there it is. Just as it was; as you could never quite remember it.”