I shall not attempt here to describe my marriage. Some impression of it will doubtless emerge. For the present story, its general nature rather than its detail is important. It was not a success. At first I saw her as a life-bringer. Then I saw her as a death-bringer. Some women are like that. There is a sort of energy which seems to reveal the world: then one day you find you are being devoured. Fellow victims will know what I mean. Possibly I am a natural bachelor.
You get so worked up and flowery! You sound as if you were quoting something all the time!
I felt so ashamed with them because everything in their life was going so well and they were so sort of successful. I couldn’t talk about what I wanted with them and they were always in a hurry.
I accused Hartley of being a ‘fantasist’, or perhaps that was Titus’s word, but what a ‘fantasist’ I have been myself. I was the dreamer, I the magician. How much, I see as I look back, I read into it all, reading my own dream text and not looking at the reality. Hartley had been right when she said of our love that it was not part of the real world. It had no place.
It had indeed been a failure of faith and courage not to wander on through the forest, not to search faithfully for his true mate, not to believe and endure.
I have seen much of human beings over a long period, and I have learnt how little good to expect from them.
Some people are just ‘diminishers’ and ‘spoilers’ for others. I suppose almost everybody diminishes someone. A saint would be nobody’s spoiler.
There was a shadowy light, not exactly twilight, but an uncertain vivid yet hazy illumination, wherein people walked like spirits, bathed in light and not revealed.
A few people paused to look at him, but Londoners were by now so accustomed to ‘weirdies’ of all kinds that his ritual aroused little interest.
Magic besieges the religious life and men yearn to speak the language of angels.
You can’t go through the looking-glass without cutting yourself.
You don’t know what it is to want a man, any man. I wish I could discover some respectable male prostitutes, like civil servants or university dons who do it in their spare time for a bit of pocket money, there must be such people.
And I was upset to find how really reluctant I was to leave my little flat. It was as if I was almost frightened. Spasms of prophetic homesickness pierced me as I rearranged the china and dusted it with my handkerchief, obsessive visions of burglaries and desecrations.
The room had the rather sinister tedium which some bedrooms have, a sort of weary banality which is a reminder of death. A dressing table can be a terrible thing.
He was not notably vertebrate and could hardly look after himself, so how could he look after Crystal?
To say we were ‘in love’, that vague weakened phrase, cannot express it. We loved each other, we lived in each other, through each other, by each other. We were each other. Why was it such pure unadulterated pain?
I wonder if it’s harder to be good in this age?
She must not be tempted by truthfulness, she must play the game out to the end.
Give yourself to these great works of art. They suffice for a lifetime.
The problems were too evident, they sat together eyeing them in silence. The stage now belonged to the young people, there would be happenings. Yet nothing happened; and Clement felt as if a magic spell had paralysed them all.