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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The novel reflects many of the themes of the period such as the fear of change felt by some and the desperate longing for change endured by others.
I knew that if I married Simon I should have to fight hard for my work and my individuality. His personality was so strong that it might swamp me. Already I knew that he was obstinate and ruthless; that he liked very few of the things that I liked, and was ignorant as a savage about everything that I had been taught to respect. The thought of our life together appalled and fascinated me.
“You attract me more than any woman I’ve ever seen. You attract me so much that I wonder if I’m not mixing up marriage with going to bed.”
It occurred to me that when we had first met we had circled round each other warily like prize-fighters looking for a weakness in the other’s guard. From the beginning there had been a faint sense of antagonism between us; the antagonism of two intensely egotistical people, neither of whom enjoyed the sensation of giving in. We both had black, unforgiving tempers.
After I married Simon she used to try and make me understand, gently and tactfully, that now I had become a Quinn there was really no need to work so hard. “You look too thin, Nevis.” “Yes, I’ve been terribly busy with the new book.” “But, my dear, you don’t have to do it now. You know that, don’t you?
Simon and I had talked over the children question and decided that we did not want to have any for a long time. We were both selfish. I was afraid that a child would interfere with my work, and Simon was afraid that it would interfere with my figure.
We have nothing in common except sex. How is it that I ever thought we should make a success of marriage, and how is it that, barring five or six crashing rows a week, I seem to have thought right?”
He was one of those people who are convinced that all Americans have loud, twanging voices and are vulgar, incomprehensible barbarians who exist solely for the purpose of being sponged upon by stout-hearted Englishmen.
Neither of us had inquired about each other’s work for the simple reason that we didn’t give a damn.
Ordinary rules did not apply to Simon because he ignored them all. It was no use reminding myself that I knew all about the Carolinan poets when I was being overridden by someone who did not know a Carolinan poet from Goddamn, and cared less.
She had an intellectual little arched nose and a coarse, stupid mouth, daubed preposterously with scarlet wax. I wondered which came out victorious in the saint versus guttersnipe battle of her face.
good prose.
“Take a lesson from me, Nevis. A woman who has run from big, satisfying gestures all her life. They’re damn uncomfortable things to live up to, and they put lines into your face. That is why you find me at the age of thirty-eight quite resigned to middle age, three children, a good complexion and no lovers.”
Simon loved maps. He loved finding the old Roman trackways and the Celtic camps. His imagination could people them with men and horses, crawling babies and dogs sniffing about the walls, when all I could see was a chalk-scarred hill dotted with dark juniper-bushes and ridged with strange bumps and circles. I would be conscious only of the cold wind up my legs while Simon stood with his head thrown back, muttering angrily: “My God, those were the days to be born in!”
Clearly, Simon thinks about the Roman Empire. Must have been a thing for ages now. 😃
One oughtn’t to come back to a place where one has been happy. It’s always a risk, always depressing.”
Funny to think that this beautiful small being, perfect down to the last finger-nail and curl of moist fair hair, would grow into a man who made snoring noises in his sleep and desired women and thought all kinds of base and beautiful thoughts.
I tried to listen to Hilda patiently and rationally; I tried to think that she was a human being and not an ignorant animal who was perhaps slightly more valuable than a cow.
b*tch.
The Quinns never gave money to beggars, because it was well-known that most beggars were richer than they were and only went about looking hungry for fun. But they subscribed heavily to all the best charities, and if they subscribed often enough they were given titles, which was nice for their children.
“I feel that whatever comes of it will have some sort of meaning. Nothing is meaningless. That, so far as I’ve got a religion, is my religion, Nevis. You may go away and have an experience that will hurt you, but after a while you will find that it has had its value in your life, even though it may have been a queer, unhappy one.”
John Carey wrote in The Intellectuals and the Masses that ‘the difference between the nineteenth-century mob and the twentieth-century mass is literacy’ – but anti-intellectualism became a badge of honour for many in the period.
