18 Quotes by Simon Raven

...dusk is the time when men whisper of matters about which they remain silent in the full light of the sun.

In becoming the universe God abdicated. He destroyed himself as God. He turned what he had been, his true self, into nullity and thereby forfeited the Godlike qualities which pertained to him. The universe which he has become is also his grave. He has no control in it or over it. God, as God, is dead.

Right ho, I'll marry you. That'll keep your family happy. But I won't live with you - ever.

Whereas the gentleman always seeks to deserve his position, the aristocrat, disdainful and insouciant, is quite happy just to exploit it.

I've always written for a small audience consisting of people like myself who are well-educated, worldly, skeptical and snobbish (meaning that they rank good taste over bad). And who believe that nothing and nobody is special.

For in a literary career there was one unfailing advantage: No degree whatever of moral or social disgrace could disqualify one from practice - and indeed a bad character, if suitably tricked out for presentation, might win one helpful publicity.

I wanted to look at the upper-middle-class scene since the war, and in particular my generation's part in it. We had spent our early years as privileged members of a privileged class. How were we faring in the Age of the Common Man? How ought we to be faring?

How can I go on with this? Please God, let me win a football pool.

Gentlemen can now only behave as such, or be tolerated as such, in circumstances that are manifestly contrived or unreal.