Capital

But there was, it turned out, a big difference between theory and practice, and it was this: theory was when it happened to other people. Practice was when it happened to you.

- Love is what makes the earth  go around the sun.
- No, that's gravity.

Yes, the transport was shit, but lots of things about life were shit. None of them was improved by complaining.

Zbigniew disliked disliking himself.

They think that the whole world revolves around their needs, for the good reason that the institutions and authority figures in their world do, in fact, put them first. They’re not wrong to think they’re the centre of the universe. They’re just wrong to think it will stay that way. Then you get to the adult world, and at some point the penny drops. No one cares about you and most of the time they don’t even notice you’re there.

Men and women fighting, puking, men hitting each other, men hitting their women or being hit by them, men raping and women being raped, both sexes contracting diseases, hurting their children, crashing vehicles, killing themselves, killing themselves with drink. And why did this society have such a deep need for intoxication? Because it knew it was lost, it was on the wrong path, and it had to blot out that knowledge with all the means at its disposal.

Petunia never did anything that she didn't want to do, and she wanted to do was what she had done the day before.

If youhave seven children, Shahid wondered, does that mean you’re keen on sex, keen on your wife, or keen on children? Or just shit at contraception? Or all four of those things?

The law is a brilliant mechanism for catching people who don’t know what to say and do when they are in trouble. With more seasoned criminals it works much less well.

Usman was coming to think that your roots were not necessarily the same thing as your home, but he didn’t yet know what to make of the thought.

He felt the way a man feels when he’s been about to step out into the road without looking, then caught himself at the last moment and just avoided a speeding car.

The need to confess rose in his throat like a nausea. And yet he couldn’t speak, and so the two young people who loved each other stayed stuck and miserable.

The thing about looking after young children was, you had to be cut out for it, and Arabella, quite simply and quite frankly – she said so herself – wasn’t. Her boys were lovely, but they were all-consuming, and Arabella did not want to be all-consumed.

Bad time to go looking for work – don’t want to seem desperate. Very off-putting. I tell my clients, it’s like sex. More desperate you are, more likely you are to have to pay for it!

But knowing that you had gone wrong, and knowing how you had gone wrong, were not the same thing as
knowing how to put it right.

His nan just smiled at him, as if she hadn’t heard, but it was a sad smile, which meant that she probably had.