There are men to whom a marriage is eternal and who are crippled for ever when it ends, largely, I think, because of the passion and completeness of … - Howard Spring

Though blind chance took me to a newspaper office, I was happy there at once; and I have been happy in newspaper offices ever since.
It was clear from the first that the way up was through the reporters’ room; and the way to the reporters’ room in those days was by learning shorthand. It was a lucky thing for me that there was another boy in the office who shared my passion for learning shorthand. It is the easiest thing in the world to learn; but when we had learned the principles there came the question of practice.
We solved this by coming to the office at eight each morning. Our work began at nine, and for an hour before that time we harangued and declaimed to one another from a volume of Sir Edward Clarke’s speeches, borrowed from the office library.

I was beginning to see that my whole life had been a flight from the possibility of unearthing the sort of man I really was.

After I had eaten my evening meal I wandered out on to the beach where the tide was coming in sharply, a tumble of white in the darkness. I walked as far as the cliff beyond the beach, and I sat down there on a tussock of sea-pinks, listening to the surge of the water, watching the stars that the clouds covered and unveiled and the cluster of humble lights half a mile away that was Penmael. I felt lonely. My body was warm, but I was chilled to the soul's marrow. This was the oddest feeling I had ever known: this loneliness. Aloneness was something else. I had sought it eagerly, welcomed it when found, but I had never been lonely in my aloneness. Now I was so lonely that I could stand it no longer.