Howard Jacobson

How do you go on knowing that you will never again - not ever, ever - see the person you have loved? How do you survive a single hour, a single minute, a single second of that knowledge? How do you hold yourself together?

So many unhappy women out there. Such a sea of female misery.

But what is the imagination for if not to grasp how the world feels to those who don't think what you think?

At a certain age men began to shrink, and yet it was precisely at that age that their trousers became too short for them.

It's never over till it's over with a friend.

I could use the company but I can't go through the pain of getting it.

Was he a bad man or just a foolish one? He didn't feel bad to himself. As a husband he believed himself to be essentially good and loyal. It just wasn't written in a man's nature to be monogamous, that was all. And he owed something to his nature even when his nature was at odds with his desire, which was to stay at home and cherish his wife. It was his nature – all nature, the rule of nature – that was the bastard, not him.