Chapter One, p. 5, Lessing:
Strange how once influential books disappear.

Chapter One, p. 10, Lessing:
Perhaps it was from that war that I first felt the struggling panicky need to escape, with a nervous aversion to where I have just stood, as if something there might blow up or drag me down by the heel.

Chapter 5, p. 66, Lessing:
When my father remonstrated she shouted at him that he knew nothing about the country; perhaps it was the first time I heard all the white clichés: You don't understand our problems. They only understand the stick. They are nothing but savages. They are just down from the trees. You have to keep them in their place.

Chapter 6, p. 88, Lessing:
A bad book cannot tell you about people—only about the author.

Chapter 9, p. 171, Lessing:
Quite soon, they married. Later they divorced. Women with this kind of lazy mercenary...