...the words of the King of Brobdingnag on mankind in Gulliver's Travels : ' the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth'.Always I came home drunk and comatose, with my stomach protruding like a balloon. My father would carry me home on his shoulder: ' Now I carry you home when you are drunk. But when you grow up you will have to carry me home when I am a drunken old man.' He laughed as he said that, but he told me seriously never to fall in love with rice – whisky. I never did, because – fortunately – it always gave me a terrible hangover.
' There is a long queue between heaven and hell. We are not all allowed to meet Him just as soon as we like. Sometimes you have to reincarnate before you are allowed to meet Him.' A flash of his old political bitterness came back : ' I hope the queue is not as long as for the Socialist shops.'
The idea of permanent happiness was to her impossible. The joy of life was to have the courage and intelligence to overcome the fears and obstacles of life, and to live absolutely in the present – which was the only way of enjoying it.
... it was strange to us that a don from a university as famous as Cambridge could seem unsure what he thought and not be afraid to say so to simple students.
The cult of exercise and athletics struck me as an extension of the competitiveness that I found all around me. It seemed that in the West – and especially in a super – competitive place like Cambridge – you had constantly to be making and remaking yourself; you could not simply be.
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