Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.

Any rapidly enacted episode. . .should be seen through only one pair of eyes.

Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board.

Each time you happen to me all over again.

Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her-of enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated-he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch.

[B]ut he had lived in a world in which, as he said, no one who loved ideas need hunger mentally.

They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything.