The next best thing to talking to her is talking about her.

He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.

It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn’t the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn’t we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed?

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

They haven't left us much to believe, have they? — even disbelief. I can't believe in anything bigger than a home, or anything vaguer than a human being.

Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness.

Sooner or later... one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.