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.
How absolute the knave is!
So was she on the side of dragons and indifferent to the fate of princesses?
Where’s your house?’ ‘Kempsford Gardens, by West Brompton tube station.
I’m not interested. I never liked him. He’s some sort scoundrel.
He can do anything he likes and I’m so lonely, oh so lonely – And I put up with it because there was nothing else to do –.