"Your 'moral ambition' or whatever you call your selfish optimism, is just the old lie of Christian salvation, that you can shed your old self and become good simply by thinking about it - and as you sit and dream this dream you feel that you are changed already and have no more work to do - and so you are happy in your lie." p. 25

"Death dries the tears of the dead." p. 54

"'You leave the future to me, now that you've utterly desolated and defiled it. But you still have to live your own foul enslaved future day by day and minute by minute - quite apart from anything lese, your stupidity amazes me.' Duncan, with some difficulty, hauled himself out of his armchair. 'Everything about this infatuation, everything that I imagine about you and Crimond being together, fills me with loathing and horror and...