None of this, of course, was ever stated: the genteel social Darwinism of the English middle classes always remained implicit.
May you be ordinary, as the poet once wished the new-born baby.
Masters and parents used to remind us irritatingly that they too had once been young, and so could speak with authority. It's just a phase, they would insist. You'll grow out of it; life will teach yo...
Los directores de este tipo gritaban y maldecían a las orquestas, montaban escenas, amenazaban con despedir al clarinete principal por llegar tarde. Y la orquesta, obligada a aguantarlo, replicaba con...
Look what she has lost, now that she has lost life. Her body, her spirit; her radiant curiosity about life. At times it feels as if life itself is the greatest loser, the true bereaved party, because...
It seemed that Soviet power had finally decided to love him; and he had never felt a clammier embrace.
It had seemed to us philosophically self-evident that suicide was every free person's right: a logical act when faced with terminal illness or senility; a heroic one when faced with torture or the avo...
If these are indeed the spirits of Englishmen and Englishwomen who have passed over into the next world, surely they would know how to form a proper queue?
If the statistics of happiness depend on personal reporting, how can we be sure that anyone is as happy as they claim to be? What if they aren’t telling the truth? No, we have to assume that they are,...
I wish life was like banking,' I said. 'I don't mean it's straightforward. Some of it's incredibly complicated. But you can understand it in the end, if you try hard enough. Or there's someone, somewh...
I was deeply misled by Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which seemed to insist that running naked through damp undergrowth with wild flowers entwined in your pubic hair was just about the closest thing to hea...
I remember laughing with relief that the same old adolescent boredom goes on from generation to generation. ...the words took me back to my own years of stagnancy, and that terrible waiting for life t...
I remember a period in late adolescence when my mind would make itself drunk with images of adventurousness. This is how it will be when I grow up. I shall go there, do this, discover that, love her,...
I met a girl while I was out there: Annie. She was American, travelling round like me. We hooked up, as she put it, and spent three months together. She wore plaid shirts, had grey-green eyes and a fr...
I loved her; we were happy; I miss her. She didn't love me; we were unhappy; I miss her.
I keep alive our lost private language.
I didn't doubt for a moment that she had read them all, or that they were the right books to own. Further, they seemed to be an organic combination of her mind and personality, whereas mine struck me...
I can't do anything to you now, but time can. Time will tell. It always does.
How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life...
How easy it was to be a Communist when you weren’t living under Communism!