“This soirée was followed by a longer and more serious session in Pommeroy's, which had ended once again, I regret to say, with Henry and me recalling the great hits of Dame Vera Lynn. So now I turned my face to the wall, closed my eyes and knew what it was like to stand on the edge of eternity.”

“What on earth was Henry talking about?''His soul. I wonder where he keeps it.”

“He's a cabinet minister and his mother was a cook. My father was a doctor and I'm a cook. Perhaps I passed him on the way down, or did he pass me on the way up?”

“Take sex, for instance.''What do you want me to do with it?''Try to be serious for a moment. Take the sex life of our father.'[...]Even after a couple of brandies he felt extremely reluctant to discuss sex and his father. 'It's something I'd rather not think about,' he said. 'We all come into existence as a result of a momentary embrace by our parents which find impossible to imagine. [...] We all assume we're the result of our own particular immaculate conception.”

“Soapy Sam looked as though he had just sat down on a favourite armchair which had gone missing.”

“He is a pale, long faced, unsmiling fellow who probably lives on a diet of organic bran and carrot juice. He heard Ballard open the proceedings against La Maison with a pained expression, and looked at me over his half-glasses as though I were a saucepan that hadn't been washed up properly.”

“Rumpole, you must move with the times.""If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them.”