[T]here was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones. - Kingsley Amis

[B]eing a writer is much more important to the person, to the writer, than being anything else is to the person being it.[…] More than being a painter is to the painter or being a composer of music is to the composer, more than being anything else except maybe being a priest.

There isn't another other sex.

He's taken to going off for hours at a time, wandering round those woods that lead off from the common apparently. Nothing there apart from trees and sexual maniacs.