“It then occurred to him that he had never had a better time. He felt fifty years younger. He also felt like a schoolboy who had just violated the body of his first girl friend.Well! Heck! When had he ever eaten a vulva?[MMT]”

“He saw the girl watching him and he smiled at her. It was an old smile that he had been using for fifty years, ever since he first smiled...”

“He felt a momentary pang of regret that he had not spent more time with his beloved wife. But it passed when he remembered that the reason he’d gone to sea in the first place was that he had never really liked his beloved wife.”

“The feeling was a sword thrust as deep as anything he had ever felt, piercing through his body. It seemed like he had been falling for a very long while, and each time he realized it, he had fallen a little deeper, a little further. He had never known that falling in love could be as helpless and complete as this.”

“Though nothing much had happened, he felt that he had seen and experienced enough that day - thus securing his tomorrow. For today he required no more, no sight or conversation, and above all nothing new. Just to rest, to close his eyes and ears; just to inhale and exhale would be effort enough. He wished it was bedtime. Enough of being in the light and out of doors; he wanted to be in the dark, in the house, in his room. But he had also had enough of being alone; he felt, as time passed, that he was experiencing every variety of madness and that his head was bursting. He recalled how, years ago, when it had been his habit to taken afternoon walks on lonely bypaths, a strange uneasiness had taken possession of him, leading him to believe that he had dissolved in the air and ceased to exist.”

“Her absence had felt like torture--almost a form of personal punishment. He had nobody to discuss his feelings with, and for the first time he realised with appalling clarity what a destructive hold she had over him.”