"she kept sliding down, in small half-willing surrenders, till she was a heap, with the book held tiringly above her face."
- Alan Hollinghurst
"She felt something similar, but worse in a way, about hundreds and hundreds of books she’d read, novels, biographies, occasional books, about music and art—she could remember nothing about them at all..."
"The worse they are the more they see beauty in each other."
"There is a sort of aesthetic poverty about conservatism"
"After that they browsed for a minute or two in a semi-detached fashion. Nick found a set of Trollope which had a relatively modest and approachable look among the rest, and took down The Way We Live N..."
"There was the noise itself, which he thought of vaguely as the noise of classical music, sameish and rhetorical, full of feelings people surely never had"
"On the stairs he was crying so much he hardly saw where he was going - not a mad boo-hoo but wailing sheets of tears, shaken into funny groans by the bump of each step as he hurried down."
"She felt that at some point she must finally and formally talk to Louisa about Hubert, and ask her to acknowledge that the worst possible thing had happened to her as well."
"I can’t bear the smell of cigars, can you?” said Lady Partridge. “Lionel hates it too,” murmured Rachel. As did Nick, to whom the dry lavatorial stench of cigars signified the inexplicable confidence ..."
"He wanted pure compliments, just as he wanted unconditional love."