What an extraordinary satisfaction there is in cleaning things! (Does the satisfaction depend on ownership? I suspect so.) - Iris Murdoch

Toby had received, though not yet digested, one of the earliest lessons of adult life: that one is never secure. At any moment one can be removed from a state of guileless serenity and plunged into its opposite, without any intermediate condition, so high about us do the waters rise of our own and other people's imperfection.

I had deluded myself throughout by the idea of reviving a secret love which did not exist at all.

It was a piece of thoroughly picturesque and proper violence. I like a violent man, really, a man who's a bit of a brute in a decent straightforward way.