“In the break-up of a marriage the world inclines to take the side of the partner with most vitality, rather than the one apparently least to blame.”

“One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.”

“In any case the friendships of later life, in contrast wih those negotiated before thirty, are apt to be burdened with reservations, constraints, inhibitions.”

“She scarcely spoke at all and might have been one of those huge dolls which, when inclined backwards, say "Ma-ma" or "Pa-pa": though impossible to imagine in any position so undignified as that req...”

“What a shabby lot of highbrows have turned out tonight," he said, when he saw us. "It makes me ashamed to be one.”

“That was a good straightforward point of view, no pretence that games were anything but an outlet for power and aggression; no stuff about their being enjoyable as such. You played a game to demons...”

“I'm so cool that the kids come to my bedroom and go, 'Mom! Turn the music down!”

“I think poetry without metaphor is like husband and wife living in separate bedrooms.”

“There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.”

“Oblivion, she thought. That was the world she lived in. It was what they should name some countries, towns, and places.”

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'Quite often men are fools.”