Beatrix

“She said she was breaking up with me because I didn't know how to express my emotions. The thing is, I didn't have that many. As far as I was concerned, it was pretty simple. I was in love with her and I liked our life and we laughed a lot and it felt so good to be in bed with her and have her touching me. I liked what we had.”
― M.J. Hyland, This Is How

“Practise your confidence tricks on the street and you risk getting shot by trigger-happy security guards; do it in the office and you get put on the board.”
― James Scudamore, Heliopolis

“She loved him, though not at this particular moment.”
― Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers

“Oh, misanthropy and sourness. Gary wanted to enjoy being a man of wealth and leisure, but the country was making it none too easy. All around him, millions of newly minted American millionaires were engaged in the identical pursuit of feeling extraordinary - of buying the perfect Victorian, of skiing the virgin slope, of knowing the chef personally, of locating the beach that had no footprints. There were further tens of millions of young Americans who didn't have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively uncool?”
― Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections