31 Quotes by Alan Hollinghurst

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

Each person if he was lucky found the place where he could shine, and the person he could shine on. At Cranley Gardens Johnny had been audience, to Evert, to Ivan, to the whole clever, memoir-swapping gang. But with Pat he was a closely attended performer - he was funny, almost articulate, and rich in things worth saying.

He wanted pure compliments, just as he wanted unconditional love.

He was asking for memories, too young himself to know that memories were only memories of memories.

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

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.

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

Outside, beyond where the light from our window fell, there was a deep inner well. The roof in which these rooms were built dropped steeply away, and facing us across the void were other similar dormers, unlit, their windows open into shadowy stillness. Above the roofline the sky was amorously transformed by the pink glare of the London dusk.