If your work was an intransitive verb then that meant your trust fund subsidized it.

I felt like abandoning everything else I did to try to be happy, and just spending the rest of my life finding things Edith needed to be told, and telling her.

We wondered about the straights. “They’re like pandas,” Edith said. “You pity them in the zoo, but fling the cage open and they’ll stay there, chewing.”

she asked if I thought I’d gone for unavailable people because I knew I’d never have to face the reality that being with them would not solve all my problems. I told her she had no business saying something that perceptive.

ironic heteronormativity was still heteronormative,

Victoria ordered thé au citron. Her slight mispronunciation of “citron” presented a quandary. I could order it, too, and say it properly. I wouldn’t if she’d really butchered it, since that would be crass—but a slight difference would prickle her without letting her feel cathartically wronged. Alternatively, I could ask for lemon tea and make her f

He receivedly pronunciated his defalcatory fricatives and he took his time doing it, because he could,

My desire was for Julian’s feelings to be stronger than mine. No one would sympathize with that. I wanted a power imbalance, and I wanted it to benefit me.

For Brits, class was like humility: you only had it as long as you denied it.