"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, Cannin… - Paul Scott

"I kept myself very much to myself, as one does if one is old and doesn't much care for the people round about."

"Have you literary ambitions of your own?"
"I have dabbled in my time."
"Dabbled?"
Bluntly, salting my own wound, I said "I had no staying power, Mrs Hurst. Not for the things I wanted to do, at any rate. I imagined much, started little, finished nothing and published not at all."
"I think you are too easily discouraged."
"I had no original creative talent. In the field of what might be called literary research I had a sort of painstaking, plodding conscientiousness which simply meant I was well on my way to becoming a hack of sound judgment. A man could go on turning out fatuous tripe until the cows come home without necessarily knowing it."

I had the impression she had become unconscious of her surroundings and was watching the past flick by like a series of moving pictures, silent, uncaptioned; a gate here, a fence there; doors opening upon rooms sometimes empty, sometimes crowded; and stairs, endless, endless stairs down which one was afraid to go for the terror that awaited one's return.