Quotes from Diana Evans

It's hard to think about nothing. I've tried it. You end up thinking about everything and getting stressed out. It's best to just think of one thing. A good thing.

It wasn't you, you know,' Michael said in the end. 'That wasn't the reason. You were just a device in the machine of our breaking, and we needed to break. It's not so bad, when it finally happens. You think the world is going to collapse around you but it doesn't. You can see yourself clearly again. You realise that the fear was the worst thing.

I needed somewhere that wasn't bad. I wanted to be light and happy like you, and I wanted never for you to see the dark. I was scared I would infect you with terrible feelings and pictures in my head of walking out in front of the traffic and - No. That's not for you, see? Not for you to hear. I needed you to be my sunlight, Bessi,' and here George paused and her words became very small, 'I lost mine, I lost it.

For home had a way of shifting, of changing shape and temperature. Home was homeless. It could exist anywhere, because its only substance was familiarity. If it was broken by long journeys or tornadoes it emerged again, reinvented itself with new decor, new idiosyncrasies of morning, noon and dusk, and old routines.

Georgia had felt the colours and the rain, but she would not miss here. And there was something lost. The now-ness of things. It was not pretty.

Georgia tutted under her breath. 'I'm loud sometimes,' she said, thinking So bloody what if I'm quiet - what's the thing about it?

Where is the fault? Is it believing that the people you love are immortal? Untouchable? No, everyone believes that. Only no one know it's what they believe- until it happens. Then comes the rage, the banging about the walls, crying what if, what if. Everyone is always so damned surprised, that is the horror of it.

This is where you come when you are lost, when you feel that you are never going to find the place. You go to the first place, the first country, to her net curtains and her singular food, to her safe and open door. You lie down. You eat. You listen to her. And you know that this house will not fall down. This house is sturdy and is made of bricks, and the wolf will not come and blow it down.

C'est incroyable ce que la musique peut charpenter une vie, toute une vie, et te la rendre par pans entiers, alors que tu pensais avoir tout oublié.

Before the children,' Alice said, nodding her head slowly. 'Children change everything. Family change everything. You must cross the river, to the other side of yourself. After that you find it.

Home was homeless. It could exist anywhere, because its only substance was familiarity.

The greatest challenge of life is to not die before we die

As for Bessi, she spent her first human month in an incubator, with wires in her chest, limbs straggling and pleading like a beetle on its back. The incubator had a lot to answer for.

his life required a dramatic change, a splintering, some kind of scandal or shock or tremor, when he most wanted to flee, to rip off his suit and run screaming from the building, and go – where?

Their talking was like a river, always flowing, delirious with movement. It was oblivious to their physical separation and continued within, so that their coming back together was merely an increase in volume.

The voice took Damian right back to a time when Joyce, he and Laurence were sitting at the table playing blackjack. It was all crisp edges and clusters of colours in his head, Joyce's purple cardigan, the gold buttons, the flowers on the table, the orange curtain. The vividness, the immediacy of the image, brought tears to his eyes.

Jump, by Kris Kross, on whether there is jumping during the chorus and for how long.

It's not so bad, when it finally happens. You think the world is going to collapse around you but it doesn't. You can see yourself clearly again. You realise that the fear was the worst thing.

the future has already happened, just like the past. And one day you will see that there are no answers, only the places we make.