On love and berets.

A few favorite quotes from my aforementioned current read:

"People get themselves all steamed up about whether they're in love or not, and can't work it out, and their decisions all go to pot. It's happening every day. They ought to realize that the love part's perfectly easy; the hard part is the working-out, not about love, but about what they're going to do. The difference is that they can get their brains going on that, instead of taking the sound of the word love as a signal for switching them off. They can get somewhere, instead of indulging in a sort of orgy of emotional self-catechising about how you know you're in love, and what love is anyway, and all the rest of it. You don't ask yourself what greengages are, or how you know whether you like them or not, do you?"

And on everyone's favorite head-topper:

"[Bertrand]was wearing a blue beret, which had much the same effect on Dixon as Welch senior's fishing hat. If such headgear was a protection, what was it a protection against? If it wasn't a protection, what was it? What was it for? What was it for?"