O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.

Limbo is the place. In Limbo one has natural happiness without the beatific vision; no harps; no communal order; but wine and conversation and imperfect, various humanity. Limbo for the unbaptized, for the pious heathen, the sincere sceptic.

Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.'-William Boot

He lay back for a little in his bed thinking about the smells of food . . . of the intoxicating breath of bakeries and dullness of buns. . . . He planned dinners, of enchanting aromatic foods . . . endless dinners, in which one could alternate flavour with flavour from sunset to dawn without satiety, while one breathed great draughts of the bouquet of old brandy.

All fates are ‘worse than death’.

Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.