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“... It’s certainly an excellent arrangement,’ the official says, ‘always unimaginably excellent, even if in other respects hopeless.’ We can easily picture, or even recall, arrangements that are excellent for some and hopeless for others, and that is what the phrase ‘in other respects’ invites us to do. But the larger rhythm and grammar of the sentence ask us to go beyond this option, to think both contrary thoughts at once, taking excellence and hopelessness as partners in an intricate dance, each calling for and implying the other; as if the arrangement is excellent because it’s hopeless, hopeless because it’s excellent ...”

“... same way, even with the same pauses and hand gestures. At the end, I would play on my phone one of Eric’s earliest campaign ads, in which he shoots a machine gun into a field as he promises to take ‘dead aim at politics as usual’. ‘If you’re ready for a conservative outsider,’ he says, ‘I’m ready to fire away.’ I would tell how Sheena and I ...”

“... of love at all. Her own fortunes in love had been mixed. The daughter of Dean Farrar (author of Eric, or Little by Little), she was only 14 when one of the Dean’s curates fell in love with her, and only 16 when they were married. The curate was 33. Eight years later, they had had five children, and the 24-year-old wife was also looking after three infant ...”