"Widows tend either to fade away when husbands die, committing emotional suttee, or else find that a new life burgeons. Here in Christchurch, a lot of burgeoning goes on."

“Young women especially have something invested in being nice people, and it's only when you have children that you realise you’re not a nice person at all, but generally a selfish bully.”

“I like sex. I've had feedback but men will feed you back anything, won't they?”

“Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens.”

“I wonder if my shrink was a woman not a man I'd be in a better or worse state?”

“Fortunately, there is more to life than death. There is for one thing, fiction. A thousand thousand characters to be sent marching out into the world to divert time from its forward gallop to the terrible horizon.”

“Go to work on an egg.”