'Maths and numbers and abstraction, these all seem like very un-Irish things; but imagining other worlds, turning reality into a hall of mirrors, these are things we are very good at.'
'Isn’t the Scots pine the loneliest tree in the world? I said. Look at it, look at that one there, standing so mournful, and apart, and dour, and elegiac. Scottish to its roots.'
'But the bit that gets me is when Tess writes her letter. She just spills out the truth about herself and the next day she’s trying to figure out if Angel Clare has read the thing and if he’ll still marry her.'
