He lay on his chair with his hands clasped above his paunch not reading, or sleeping, but basking like a creature gorged with existence.

There is a sadness at the back of life which some people do not attempt to mitigate. Entirely aware of their own standing in the shadow, and yet alive to every tremor and gleam of existence, there they endure.

There was a day when I liked writing letters -- it has gone. Unfortunately the passion for getting them remains.

Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night... shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves.

Theories then are dangerous things.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends - the right sort.

First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.