V.

There is nothing like old jokes. It's a kind of stability about them: familiar ground.

Living as be does much of the time in a world of metaphor, the poet is always acutely conscious that metaphor has no value apart from its function; that it is a device, an artifice.

Perhaps British colonialism has produced a new sort of being, a dual man, aimed two ways at once: towards peace and simplicity on the one hand, towards an exhausted intellectual searching on the other.

It takes, unhappily, no more than a desk and writing supplies to turn any room into a confessional.

History, the proverb says, is made at night.

He felt let down and saw no other way to improve his outlook but to get laid. Unfortunately he was now afflicted by contraceptivelessness.

So he talked, all the way through, till both had done and he rolled on his back to feel traditionally sad.

Losing faith is a complicated business and takes time. There are no epiphanies, no "moments of truth." It takes much thought and concentration in the later phases.

To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult.

You reach a point, and Profane knew he'd reached it, where you know how much you can and cannot do. But every now and again he got attacks of acute optimism.