"His profession — offered him something like a long Jesuitical training in self-deception which enabled him to present an ever more highly polished surface to the world without deepening his human experience for he lived surrounded by his ambitious and sycophantic fellows who taught him only how to excel in forms of address, and the elaborate kindnesses which, in pleasing, pave the way to advancement."

“Then he saw that she was blind, her face slightly upcast to her companion's in the manner of those whose expressions never fully attain their target - the eyes of another.”

“It's unthinkable not to love — you'd have a severe nervous breakdown. Or you'd have to be Philip Larkin.”

“Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment; only there does its satisfaction lie.”

“He had at last discovered that love had no pith in it, and that the projection of one own's feelings upon the images of a beloved was in the long run, an act of self-mutilation.”

“here was Kenilworth now heading the new department concerned with Personnel one of those blank administrative constructs which offered no openings into the world of policy. A dead end. he would soon develop the negative powers of obstruction which always derive from a sense of failure.”

“Old age is an insult. It's like being smacked.”