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I told myself that as long as there were books I could be sure of being happy.

V: Say that you are happy, even if it's not true.
E: What am I to say?
V: Say, I am happy.
E: I am happy.
V: So am I.
E: So am I.
V: We are happy.
E: We are happy. [Silence]. What do we do now that we are happy?

It was Neville who changed our time. He, who has been thinking with the unlimited time of the mind, which stretches in a flash from Shakespeare to ourselves, poked the fire and began to live by that other clock which marks the approach of a particular person. The wide and dignified sweep of his mind contracted.

Going up to bed we settled our quarrel on the stairs, and standing by the window looking at a sky clear like the inside of a blue stone, "Heaven be praised," I said, "we need not whip this prose into poetry. The little language is enough."

I rose and walked away - I, I, I; not Byron, Shelley, Dostoevsky, but I, Bernard. I even repeated my own name once or twice. I went ... into a shop, and bought - not that I love music - a picture of Beethoven in a silver frame. Not that I love music, but because the whole of life, it's masters, it's adventurers, then appeared in long ranks of magnificent human beings behind me; and I was their inheritor...

Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a cigarette into the gutter - all are stories. But which is the true story? That I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for someone to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making this note and then another, I do not cling to life. I shall be brushed like a bee from a sunflower.

I am merely "Neville" to you, who see the narrow limits of my life and the line it cannot pass. But to myself I am immeasurable ... Beneath my eyes opens - a book; I see to the bottom; the heart - I see to the depths.

The truth is that I am not one of those who find their satisfaction in one person, or in infinity. The private room bores me, also the sky. My being only glitters when all its facets are exposed to many people. Let them fail and I am full of holes, dwindling like burnt paper.

Estragon: What did we do yesterday?
Vladimir: What did we do yesterday?
Estragon: Yes.
Vladimir: Why... nothing is certain when you're about.

'Had I been born,' said Bernard, 'not knowing that one word follows another I might have been, who knows, perhaps anything...'

I am Bernard; I am Byron; I am this, that, and the other... I am more selves than Neville thinks. We are not simple as our friends would have us to meet their needs. Yet love is simple.

Both despise me for copying what they do; but Susan sometimes teaches me, for instance, how to tie a bow, while Jinny has her own knowledge but keeps it to herself. They have friends to sit by. They have things to say privately in corners. But I attach myself only to names and faces; and hoard them like amulets against disaster.

I would DNF this but I have to make an effort to read it for class... the hyper-religious medieval brethren authorship did Lancelot so dirty in this it's barely readable

I'm a little mad at myself for having slept on Mansfield for so long, not one single story so far has left me feeling so-so and now I'm scrambling to find a way to write my final paper for my modernist lit class on her!

Every morning I wake up, make my coffee and check in on these freaks. This one is weird, even for modernism. Maybe the best way to start the day....

This is one of the most insane books ever written

Far away from this barren north London, the chosen perfect stage for the last completion of a misery as wide as the world world, was her own dream world at home in her room, her strange unfailing self, the lovely world of lovely things seen in silence and tranquility, ...the myriad indescribable things of which day and night, in solitude, were full, at every moment...

Time pressed. The year was widening and lifting too rapidly towards the heights of June when everything but the green world, fresh gleaming in parks and squares through the London swelter, sweeping with the tones of spring and summer mingled amongst the changing trees, towards September, would fade from her grasp and disappear.

Uncannily similar to My Brilliant Friend (so I love it)