Life, that can shower you with so much splendour, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up.

Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.

You should give up.' 'Why?' 'For one thing, you'll live longer.' 'Oh, you don't live longer. It just seems longer.

[...] I suppose this was the first time I had ever felt an urge not to be. Never an urge to die, far less an urge to put an end to myself - simply an urge not to be. This disgusting, hostile and unlovely world was not made for me, nor I for it. It was alien to me and I to it.

Money is to Everything as an Aeroplane is to Australia. The aeroplane isn't Australia, but it remains the only practical way we know of reaching it. So perhaps, metonymically, the aeroplane is Australia after all.

It was as if he grew his hair long and smoked cigarettes because he liked to, not because he liked being seen to. This was dangerously subversive.

I think my view is that whenever you project into the future you're never likely to be accurate in the details, or the paraphernalia and style. It's in the spirit of it.