“Coming to New York from the muted mistiness of London, as I regularly do, is like travelling from a monochrome antique shop to a technicolor bazaar.”

“A neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping. ”

“How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.”

“A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car”

“The only other white people we saw during the three days we stayed there were a German couple intent on taking pictures of their stuffed sheep in a variety of locations around the world.”

“What do you make of him?" I asked Elizabeth. "Apart from the fact he's clearly insane?""What can he learn from Konrad's blood?" I said. "Except that he needs it in his body to live!""There is something ghoulish about it.""He's like a vampyre,”

“When you travel by road in the west you travel with a cohort of dust which streams up from your tyres and rolls away in a disintegrating funnel, defining the currents of air your vehicle sets in motion … And the heat is unthinkable, no matter how widely the windows are open, and the sweat streams off your body and into your socks, and if there are a number of people in the car their body stenches mingle disagreeably”