“There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.”

“So black was the way ahead that my progress consisted of long periods of inert despondency punctuated by spasmodic lurches forward towards any small chink of light that I thought I saw ... As the years went by, it did not get lighter but I became accustomed to the dark.”

“It's been agony but I couldn't have done it any other way.”

“As soon as I put my uniform on, the rest of my life solidified around me like a plaster cast. From that moment on, my friends were anyone who could put up with the disgrace; my occupation, any job from which I was not given the sack; my playground, any cafe or restaurant from which I was not barred or any street corner from which the police did not move me on.”

“It's explained that all relationship require a little give and take. This is untrue. Any partnership demands that we give and give and give and at the last, as we flop into our graves exhausted, we are told that we didn't give enough.”

“The world now seems a stunningly ignoble place. It has not really grown all that much worse but appears to have done so because we know so much more about it than we did.”

“The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.”