"I was running away. I was running away from England, from my childhood, from the winter, from a sequence of untidy, unattractive love-affairs, from the few sticks of furniture and jumble of overworn clothes that my London life had collected around me; and I was running away from drabness, fustiness, snobbery, the claustrophobia of close horizons, and from my inability, although I am quite an attractive rat, to make headway in the rat-race. In fact I was running away from almost everything except the law." Part One, Me, Chapter 1, Scaredy Cat, p. 15.

"So now my eyes filled with tears—not because of Derek, but because of the sweet pain of boy and girl and sunshine and first love with its tunes and snapshots and letters 'Sealed with a Loving Kiss.'"
Part One, Me, Chapter 2, Dear Dead Days, pp. 29-30.

"It takes a long time to write...