“But when we moved to the country, miles from the nearest restaurant, his hints anent his favorite dies grew so insistent that it became a question of tripe or divorce, and for a short time it was a difficult decision.”

“The child had indeed shut up but all the questions that had accumulated on his tongue circulated in his mouth, moved through the passages of his nose and climbed up from there to tickle into his teardrop ducts, so in his moss green pupils, curious, insistent, accusing sparks of questions continued to light up and fade away like fireflies flitting about on summer nights.”

“He had made a series of foolish decisions in his life. He had not planned well. He had not had courage when he needed it. His decisions had been short sighted. The decisions of his peers had been short sighted. These decisions had been foolish and expedient.”

“We are such sticklers for tradition in insisting on an amateur captain, regardless of the question of whether he can pull his weight as a player. The time is coming when we will have to change our views [...] when there will be no amateurs of sufficient ability to put into an England side.”

“Men made life far too difficult when they insisted on neatly categorizing their emotions. When emotions became complicated, they brooded and struggled so mightily in an attempt to simplify them again—when, given time, everything would sort itself out and slide into its place.”

“In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him to lose his mind.”