I guess they're called moments because they don't last very long.

— Sarra Manning

I smile. I smile all the time, but you're just not around to see it these days".

— Sarra Manning

It wasn't a perfect body, but it was the body she deserved. Not just from every bar of chocolate or bag of chips or laden plate of food that she'd eaten. This body was also testament to all the hours in the gym and cycling up hills on her bike and slugging down two liters of water a day and learning to love vegetables and fruits that didn't come as optional extra with a pastry crust. She'd earned this body. This was her body and she had to stop giving it such a hard time.

— Sarra Manning

Mostly she just missed Vaughn. Missed all those quiet, unspectacular moments that, when added up, showed how entwined their lives had become. And right now, she missed being able to phone him, because it would be so easy to tap in the eleven digits that would put his voice on the line. ‘Grace, about bloody time,’ he’d say, and make it sound like an endearment. But she couldn’t call Vaughn, because she’d left him. Which was a novelty, until Grace remembered that he’d have left her eventually if she hadn’t done it first. She was never the one. She was never even the one before the one. Furthermore, she was the girl who seemed like a good idea at the time, but ultimately was just a phase that people went through. That was the way it had always been. Friends and lovers came and went because there was something about her which repelled them, and she didn’t have a clue what it was. It was a mystery that she couldn’t solve on her own, and there wasn’t a single person in the world who could help. . .

— Sarra Manning

My whole life had split in two: Smith and not Smith. I liked the Smith parts of it so much better.

— Sarra Manning

Secrets aren’t the same as lying,' Vaughn commented, because they both had the muddiest of ethics, which was an odd thing to have in common.

— Sarra Manning

[She] had occasionally glimpsed a series of interchangeable well-groomed blondes accompanying him to work events, then Grace had rocked up with her funny-colored hair and her funny-colored tights, and Vaughn had been smitten. Well, as smitten as Vaughn could be.

— Sarra Manning

She heard Piers give an excited little cry and someone gave an excited little cry in return, and Grace Vaughn appeared in the open doorway, laden down with garment bags. For one fleeting moment, Ellie saw both husband and wife’s faces light up before they resembled their usual expressions – a scowl and a pout respectively.

— Sarra Manning

She was finally beginning to understand that her fixation on being a size ten had been another excuse to spend her life in preparation, instead of living it and taking risks and maybe getting hurt in the process.

— Sarra Manning

Vaughn folded his arms. ‘The reason why you’ve lasted longer than most of your erstwhile colleagues is because you don’t do drama. I don’t like drama. I get enough drama at home. My wife could teach the RSC a few things about drama.' For someone who claimed that he didn’t do drama, Vaughn was one of the biggest drama queens she knew.

— Sarra Manning