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

“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.”

“When you're young - when I was young - you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality. Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become. You want them to tell you that things are OK. And is there anything wrong with that?”

“What was the point of having a situation worthy of fiction if the protagonist didn't behave as he would have done in a book?”

“....in this country shadings of class resist time longer than differentials in age”

“You may say, But wasn't this the Sixties? Yes, but only for some people, only in certain parts of the country.”

“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.”