Dinner at the Huntercombes' possessed only two dramatic features - the wine was a farce and the food a tragedy.

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

He gave me a look of great contempt; as I supposed, for venturing, even by implication, to draw a parallel between a lack of affluence that might, literally, affect my purchase of rare vintages, and a figure of speech intended delicately to convey his own dire want for the bare necessities of life. He remained silent for several seconds, as if trying to make up his mind whether he could ever bring himself to speak to me again; and then said gruffly: 'I've got to go now.'

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

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

You have to be a product of the product.

For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected, so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity.