Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique, and not too much imagination.

If it’s going to be a world with no time for sentiment, it’s not a world that I want to live in.

But your book is wrong, Mrs. Strunk, says George, when it tells you that Jim is the substitute I found for a real son, a real kid brother, a real husband, a real wife. Jim wasn't a substitute for anything. And there is no substitute for Jim, if you'll forgive my saying so, anywhere.

She is sighing deeply now with sympathy and delight - the delight of an addict when someone else admits he's hooked, too.

California is a tragic country - like Palestine, like every Promised Land.

In ten minutes they will have arrived on campus. George will have to be George; the George they have named and will recognise. So now he consciously applies himself to thinking their thoughts, getting into their mood. With the skill of a veteran, he rapidly puts on the psychological makeup for this role he must play.

The paternalist is a sentimentalist at heart, and the sentimentalist is always potentially cruel.