Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.

Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.

Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure.

At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.

I wouldn't have thought that the techniques of story-telling, which is what the novel is after all, can vary much because there are two things involved.There's a story and there's a listener, whose attention you have to keep. Now the only way in which you can keep a reader's attention to a story is in his wanting to know what is going to happen next. This puts a fairly close restriction on the method you must use.

We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.

Are we savages or what?