Malcolm Bradbury

'The trouble is, it's hard to know you're little,' says Felicity. 'People like to make themselves matter.'

Reading someone else's newspaper is like sleeping with someone else's wife. Nothing seems to be precisely in the right place, and when you find what you are looking for, it is not clear then how to respond to it.

"Well, yes, surely I think everybody ought to enjoy life as much as it's humanly possible because that's why we exist. I believe."

'Oh, everybody exploits somebody,' says Howard, 'in this social order it's part of the human lot.'

'Look, Felicity,' says Howard, 'there's only one rule. Follow the line of your own desires.'

Jochum had said, "You keep asking the universe 'How ought I to live?' But it can't answer."

It had always seemed to Louis that a fundamental desire to take postal courses was being sublimated by other people into sexual activity.