Nov 18, 2013
"Tell me," he said, "do you like living in Edinburgh?" Isabel felt a momentary irritation with him over the question. It was something that one should not ask another, because it was either mundane to the extent of pointlessness, or tactless. If someone did not like where they lived, then that meant that that they were trapped, either by marriage or by some other domestic circumstance, or by a job , or by sheer inertia. Whatever the reason, if the answer was no, the background to that answer would be one of regret.
The Right Attitude to Rain, Alexander McCall Smith, p.193