She did not understand what all that meant, but it was evidently something very near his heart, and so she… — Nevil Shute

"If you're going to make your life in a new country you should go before you're twenty-five. After that you start to get associations, little grooves and anchors, that make it difficult to change."

He was like a little boy let loose in a toy shop, uncertain which of the attractive treasures to pick up first.

He was a dark-haired, fresh-faced boy of twenty-one or twenty-two, who adopted the pose that everything was a joke and nothing really mattered.