"How ignorant one is when faced with essential practical matters. How they trick and trap you into holes and corners."

"I was surprised, as one is, I think, whenever the tenuous thread of one's life suddenly connects, as friends, people …"

"I kept myself very much to myself, as one does if one is old and doesn't much care for the people round about."

"I had the impression she had become unconscious of her surroundings and was watching the past flick by like a series …"

"Have you literary ambitions of your own?" "I have dabbled in my time." "Dabbled?" Bluntly, salting my own wound, I sa…"

"In general men are very thoughtless creatures. Single-minded, rather. That is what life demands they should be, I thi…"

"I often look back now and regret that I never took my courage in both hands and went out into the world. That's reall…"

"Time is quick. Life is short."

"He relapsed into a silence in which his hopes scattered like mice into holes."

"Every so often there's a generation likes us, Ian. Our only raison d'être to be blown to pieces in a war we imagine w…"