Time is quick. Life is short. - Paul Scott

"I often look back now and regret that I never took my courage in both hands and went out into the world. That's really what a chap should do, Canning. Get out and look. Otherwise," again he paused, "Otherwise you never really see yourself, old man. And it's all so small and petty. A man isn't a man any longer."

I was surprised, as one is, I think, whenever the tenuous thread of one's life suddenly connects, as friends, people one would have thought strangers.

She laughed. "You haven't changed a bit. You never could stand criticism or leg-pulling. That's why you bored me, Ian. That was the trouble with your generation of so-called intellectual young men. All of you unmitigated, bloody bores with sloppy ideas and no remotest idea how to come to terms with life. When you found life coming to terms with you, you all wondered what the hell had hit you."