There was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones

He pretended to himself that he`d pick up his professor around the waist, squeeze the furry grey-blue waistcoat against him to expel the breath, run heavily with him up the steps, along the corridor to the Staff Cloakroom, and plunge the too-small feet in their capless shoes into a lavatory basin, pulling the plug once, twice, and again, stuffing the mouth with toilet paper

Great artists have a lot of woman, so if he can have a lot of women that makes him a great artist, never mind what his pictures looks like.

"Another thing you'll find is that the years of illusion aren´t those of adolescence, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they`re the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in thing and lose your head."

Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.