“And that was all the part of it - the way you were obliged to live. You stifled a groan, you lied about your love, you deceived your legal wife, and all in the name of honour. That was the damned paradox of it - in order to behave well, you have to behave badly.”

“And perhaps it was also the case that, for all a lifetime's internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as. That was your nature, whether you liked it or not.”

“The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.”

“He loved his mother: doesn't that warm your silly, sentimental, twentieth-century heart? He loved his father. He loved his sister. He loved his niece. He loved his friends. He admired certain individuals. But his affections were always specific; they were not given away to all comers. This seems enough to me. You want him to do more? You want him to 'love humanity', to goose the human race? But that means nothing. Loving humanity means as much and as little as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity? Are you sure you aren't treating yourself to easy self-congratulation, seeking approval, making certain you're on the right side?”

“Memory is identity....You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life you cease to be, even before your death.”

“It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. Beyond that … [it's] delight in, and play with, language; also, a curiously intimate way of communicating with people whom you will never meet.”

“You would think, wouldn’t you, that if you were the childof a happy marriage, then you ought to have a better thanaverage marriage yourself – either through some geneticinheritance or because you’d learnt from example? But itdoesn’t seem to work like that. So perhaps you need theopposite example – to see mistakes in order not to makethem yourself. Except this would mean that the best way forparents to ensure their children have happy marriageswould be to have unhappy ones themselves. So what’s theanswer?”