“I had a moral tutor, but never saw him (the only words of his I remember are 'The three pleasures of life -drinking, smoking, and masturbation')”

“He had never smoked but then had he ever loved? Life made him love and love made him smoke.”

“I remember scrutinizing his face. I remember drinking his face down to the last drop, trying to elucidate the character, the psychology of such an individual. And yet the only thing about him that has remained is my memory of his ugliness.”

“...they tended towards the simple pleasures in life: drinking, whoring and fighting, preferably all three at once.”

“This was very bitter to Gerald, who had never known what boredom was, who had gone from activity to activity, never at a loss. Now, gradually, everything seemed to be stopping in him. He did not want any more to do the things that offered. Something dead within him just refused to respond to any suggestion. He cast over in his mind, what it would be possible to do, to save himself from this misery of nothingness, relieve the stress of this hollowness. And there were only three things left, that would rouse him, make him live. One was to drink or smoke hashish, the other was to be soothed by Birkin, and the third was women. And there was no-one for the moment to drink with. Nor was there a woman. And he knew Birkin was out. So there was nothing to do but to bear the stress of his own emptiness.”

“If I only had three words of advice, they would be, Tell the Truth. If got three more words, I'd add, all the time.”