Суть дела

It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long.
Couldn't the test of man have been carried out in fewer
years? Couldn't we have committed our first major sin at
seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have
clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old death bed?

He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness - the sense that that is where we really belong.

Женщинам трудно жить, если они не могут гордиться хоть чем-нибудь: собой, своим мужем, своей обстановкой.

"I'd miss you," he said.

"No, Ticki, you wouldn't," she said, and surprised him
by the range of her sad spasmodic understanding.

"Darling," he said, "I love you' It was how he always began. Comfort, like the act of sex, developed a routine.

Revenge was good for the character: out of revenge grew forgiveness.

There was always a blacker corruption
elsewhere to be pointed at. The scandalmongers of the
Secretariat fulfilled a useful purpose they kept alive the
idea that no one was to be trusted. That was better than
complacence. Why, he wondered, swerving the car to avoid
a dead pye-dog, do I love this place so much? Is it because
here human nature hasn't had time to disguise itself?

He told himself: Be careful. This isn't a climate for emotion.It's a climate for meanness, malice, snobbery, but anything like hate or love drives a man off his head.

В книжках всегда бывает человек, которому можно открыть душу.

Но Таллиту просто не очень везет, а со стороны это похоже на
честность.