Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, creaking and incongruous, came into being, a vast Heath Robinson mechanism, dually controlled by them and lumbering gloomily down vistas of triteness. With a sort of heavy-fisted dexterity the mutually adapted emotions of each of them became synchronized, until the unavoidable anti-climax was at hand.

I get a warm feeling among my books.

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

A dance to the music of time.

One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.

Self-pity is essentially humorless, devoid of that lightness of touch which gives understanding of life.

[T]here is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing.