Alan Hollinghurst Quotes

she kept sliding down, in small half-willing surrenders, till she was a heap, with the book held tiringly above her face.

The worse they are the more they see beauty in each other.

There was the noise itself, which he thought of vaguely as the noise of classical music, sameish and rhetorical, full of feelings people surely never had

On the stairs he was crying so much he hardly saw where he was going - not a mad boo-hoo but wailing sheets of tears, shaken into funny groans by the bump of each step as he hurried down.

I can’t bear the smell of cigars, can you?” said Lady Partridge.

“Lionel hates it too,” murmured Rachel. As did Nick, to whom the dry lavatorial stench of cigars signified the inexplicable confidence of other men’s tastes and habits, and their readiness to impose them on their fellows.