“That's how women are with me " said Paul. "They want me like mad but they don't want to belong to me.”

“You know," he said to his mother, "I don't want to belong to the well-to-do middle class. I like my common people best. I belong to the common people." - Sons and Lovers”

“Now go away then, and leave me alone. I don't want any more of your meretricious persiflage.”

“Good God, what does it matter? If life is a tragedy, or a farce, or a disaster, or anything else, what do I care! Let life be what it likes. Give me a drink, that's what I want just now.”

“I don't care. He'll only be painting his own feelings for me, and I don't mind if he does that. I wouldn't have him touch me, not for anything. But if he thinks he can do anything with his owlish arty staring, let him stare. He can make as many empty tubes and corrugations out of me as he likes. It's his funeral. He hated you for what you said: that his tubified art is sentimental and self-important. But of course it's true.”

“My God, these folks don't know how to love -- that's why they love so easily.”

“The army leaves me time to think, and saves me from the battle of life.”