“He wanted pure compliments, just as he wanted unconditional love.”

“To apologize for what you most wanted to do, to concede that it was obnoxious, boring, 'vulgar and unsafe' --- that was the worst thing.”

“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.”

“ 'Can't really say?' Nick said, and heard, as he sometimes did, his own father's note of evasive sympathy. It was how his family sidled round its various crises; nothing was named, and you never knew for sure if the tone was subtly comprehensive, or just a form of cowardice.”

“Ricky clearly never hurried, he was his own lazy happening.”

“...all his longings came out as a kind of disdain for what he longed for.”

“He somehow saw that to her being drunk had its whole long sentimental history, whereas to him it was a freakish novelty.”