To watch. To wait. To wonder at a world in chaos,’ the girl said. ‘And hope one day you fools might learn.

A nation’s not a child, for God’s sake. … It’s like a wild horse you tame by breaking it. Or a fiery woman you slap till she sees sense and warms your bed.

We spent today sending men to hell. What’s more natural than to pass the night dreaming of procreating a few more to take their place?

Tomorrow and tomorrow come creeping in and always will. We’re fools trapped in a mechanism of our own unconscious making. Shadows strutting and fretting for one brief hour upon a stage, then heard no more....

What must be done must be done, whatever the price, the cost, the pain. One day we all must walk through fire.

And still you’ll hesitate to tell him, won’t you? Why? Because you’re a woman? Is your destiny such a small thing then? To keep your legs open and your mouth shut?

You speak as if this is a good world with a little evil in it. Rubbish. It’s a hellish one where the best a man can do is put a little sanity back and look...

There are no secrets.’ The thing smiled, showing a row of even, childlike teeth. ‘None worth keeping. Only the ones you hide from yourself, which are the most damaging and hurtful of all. Truth is...

In their vanity men focus on what they wish to hear and miss the hidden meaning, the lurking threat.

It’s a long ride home with nothing but me for company. I bore myself sometimes. Not often. Just now and again.

The only sheets I’ll ever long for are my own.

Do I dream you? Or you dream me? Or does someone, something bigger than all’ – her hands swept the vast constellations above them – ‘this beauteous calamity, dream everything we see and more?

…the antidote to death was and always would be the heat and fury of life itself.