“The flies buzzed in answer above the dirty water standing in the washbasin, in which floated a solitary black hair. It, too, was like life-- and as meaningless.”

“There are some things (like first love and one’s first reviews) at which a woman in her middle years does not care to look too closely.”

“The audience had run to beards and magenta shirts and original ways of arranging its neckwear; and not content with the ravages produced in its over-excitable nervous system by the remorseless workings of its critical intelligence, it had sat through a film of Japanese life called 'Yes,' made by a Norwegian film company in 1915 with Japanese actors, which lasted an hour and three-quarters and contained twelve close-ups of water-lilies lying perfectly still on a scummy pond and four suicides, all done extremely slowly.”

“Daisies opened in sly lust to the sun-rays and rain-spears, and eft-flies, locked in a blind embrace, spun radiantly through the glutinous light to their ordained death.”

“Dear, Missus, Mister - I beg you never to give thoughts to war, in no way, not to work for it, not by writing nor by reading about it nor by looking at the pictures nor on the television about it. Not in any way ever, at all. Not by being a soldier, sailor, airman, work in factory or above all at atom bombs. Above all at atom bombs. No obligation for this, dear fellow creature. Signed Your Fellow Creature.''P.S.,' said Gerald slowly, without turning from the window, 'If we all do this, we shall succeed.”

“Here was an occasion, she thought, for indulging in that deliberate rudeness which only persons with habitually good manners have the right to commit...”

“Curious how Love destroys every vestige of that politeness which the human race, in its years of evolution, has so painfully acquired.”