“In any case the friendships of later life, in contrast wih those negotiated before thirty, are apt to be burdened with reservations, constraints, inhibitions.”

“In any case the friendships of later life, in contrast wih those negotiated before thirty, are apt to be burdened with reservations, constraints, inhibitions.”

“Already a connoisseur of boredom, Tony extended his acquaintance with Salisbury's furnished lodgings and the cheap residential hotels of Andover.”

“Much of his time at Oxford passed by his own account under a dark cloud of listlessness and depression. He was dismayed by the undergraduates' relentless snobbery and unremitting emphasis on money.”

“Parents are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years.”

“One hears about life all the time from different people with very different narrative gifts.”

“Self-love seems so often unrequited.”

“Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed.”

“Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.”

“She scarcely spoke at all and might have been one of those huge dolls which, when inclined backwards, say "Ma-ma" or "Pa-pa": though impossible to imagine in any position so undignified as that required for the mechanism to produce these syllables.”

“Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.”

“When people really hate one another, the tension within them can sometimes make itself felt throughout a room, like atmospheric waves, first hot, then cold, wafted backwards and forwards as if in an invisible process of air conditioning, creating a pervasive physical disturbance.”