“This is the first time I've really looked at my reflection in months." To the Lykae [Bowen], she said, "No wonder you love me. Could I be any cuter?”

“A few months ago I was visiting my mother, and she said that as a child I had always wanted to learn everything, and that it took me a long time to realize that you couldn't learn everything. I got really angry, and I shouted "I'm not done yet!"”

“You really love her don't you," she said.
With all my heart."
She looked as sad as I'd ever seen her.
What's your heart telling you to do?"
I don't know."
Maybe", she said gently,"You're trying to hard to hear it.”

“Sam looked at me soft. And she hugged me. And I closed my eyes because I wanted to know nothing but her arms. And she kissed my cheek and whispered so nobody could hear.
"I love you.”

“I've been very poorly but now I feel prime,
I've been out today for the very first time.
I felt like a lad as I walked down the road,
Then I met Old Jones and he said, "Well I'm blowed!
My word you do look queer!
My word you do look queer!
Oh, dear! You look dreadful: you've had a near shave,
You look like a man with one foot in the grave."
I said, "Bosh! l'm better; it's true I've been ill."
He said, "I'm delighted you're better, but still,
I wish you'd a thousand for me in your will.
My word, you do look queer!"”

“It was the first time in years I didn’t wonder if my father was out there, looking at it too.”

“The day war broke out, my Missus said to me – she looked at me and she said, "What good are you?"”

““Fifty years,” I hackneyed, “is a long time.”
“Not when you’re looking back at them,” she said. “You wonder how they vanished so quickly.””

“I refused to believe that love could take any other form than mine: I measured love by the extent of my jealousy, and by that standard of course she could not love me at all.”

“I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? "You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!"
"Well," I said, slightly nonplussed, "the last time you saw me I'd just had a baby."
What I felt like saying was, "I've produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren't either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?" But no — my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!”