“He had quickly happened upon the truth which many lonely contemporaries would never discover, the truth that everybody, simply everybody, was panting for it and could, with patience, be shown that they were panting for it. So Adrian grabbed what was to hand and had the time of his life genitally - focusing exclusively on his own gender of course, for this was 1973 and girls had not yet been invented.”

“But an Adrian also knew that an Adrian's lies were real: they were lived and felt and acted out as thoroughly as another man's truths - if other men had truths - and he believed it possible that this last lie might see him through to the grave.”

“Once, in his first term, Cartwright had been bold enough to ask him why he was clever, what exercises he did to keep his brain fit. Healey had laughed."It's memory, Cartwright, old dear. Memory, the mother of the Muses... at least that's what thingummy said.""Who?""You know, what's his name, Greek poet chap. Wrote the Theogony... what was he called? Begins with an 'H'.""Homer?""No, dear. Not Homer, the other one. No, it's gone. Anyway. Memory, that's the key.”

“I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.”

“I suppose this was the first time I had ever felt an urge not to be. Never an urge to die, far less an urge to put an end to myself - simply an urge not to be. This disgusting, hostile and unlovely world was not made for me, nor I for it.”

“If I had a large amount of money I should certainly found a hospital for those whose grip upon the world is so tenuous that they can be severely offended by words and phrases and yet remain all unoffended by the injustice, violence and oppression that howls daily about our ears.”

“I think it was Donald Mainstock, the great amateur squash player who pointed out how lovely I was. Until that time I think it was safe to say that I had never really been aware of my own timeless brand of loveliness. But his words smote me, because of course you see, I am lovely in a fluffy moist kind of way and who would have it otherwise? I walk, and let’s be splendid about this, in a highly accented cloud of gorgeousness that isn't far short of being, quite simply terrific. The secret of smooth almost shiny loveliness, of the order of which we are discussing, in this simple, frank, creamy sort of way, doesn't reside in oils, unguents, balms, ointments, creams, astringents, milks, moisturizers, liniments, lubricants,embrocations or balsams, to be rather divine for just one noble moment, it resides, and I mean this in a pink slightly special way, in ones attitude of mind.To be gorgeous, and high and true and fine and fluffy and moist and sticky and lovely, all you have to do is believe that one is gorgeous and high and true and fine and fluffy and moist and sticky and lovely.And I believe it of myself, tremulously at first and then with rousing heat and passion, because, stopping off for a second to be super again, I’m so often told it.That’s the secret really.”