“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.”

“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...”

“Barnby always dismissed the idea of intelligence in a woman as no more than a characteristic to be endured.”

“If someone were to harm my family or a friend or somebody I love, I would eat them. I might end up in jail for 500 years, but I would eat them.”

“Sometimes you know you've got a chance with a girl because she wants to fight with you. If the world wasn't so messed up, it wouldn't be like that. If the world was normal, a girl being nice to you...”

“Smirking, he says, "Whatever spell you just tried to cast on me, it didn't work, so I think you need to go back to Hogwarts.”