Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.

So long as one is happy one can endure any discipline: it was unhappiness that broke down the habits of work.

The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.

He couldn't tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined - the taste of gin at mid-day, the smell of flowers under a balcony, the clang of corrugated iron, an ugly bird flopping from perch to perch.

I aim to be content with what I produce. It's an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible.

Rocinante was of more value for a true traveller than a jet plane. Jet planes were for business men.

It is one of the strange discoveries a man can make that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration; there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings.