Rogue Male (New York Review Books Classics)

It was not the smashed eye which surprised me—that was merely closed, swollen and ugly. It was the other eye. Glaring back at me from the mirror, deep and enormous, it seemed to belong to someone intensely alive, so much more alive than I felt.

To be shot from ambush is horribly unnerving.

I was very weak, and probably a bit light-headed. It didn’t matter. Since all that remained was to take crazy risks, to be a little crazy was no disadvantage.

Her skin was not a surface; it was an indefinite glory of the palest rose and orange that chose to mould itself to those tense limbs.

I blame myself for being drawn into argument with him, but what else could I do? I was glad to hear a cultured voice, even his, after so much solitary confinement. It was, in a sense, not unlike being stuck in the club with some bore whose opinions are very left or very right. You can’t do anything but listen to the man. You know he is wrong, but s

The emptiness was infinity, darkness with distance but no shape. The south-west wind swirled over the turf, and the triple line of turf ramparts hung over me like smooth seas travelling through the night.

As I sat back in that cheap cinema seat, with my eyes closed and with the meaningless noises and music forcing my mind from plan to plan, I saw that I could only disappear by not leaving England at all. I must bury myself in some farm or country pub until the search for me had slackened.

Well, he had missed. I think I wrote in some other context which I have forgotten that the Almighty looks after the rogue male.

He who has learned not to intrude his emotions upon his fellows has also learned not to intrude them upon himself.