

“When I was a child my ineptitude was a burden to my parents and my teachers. They could not see that it was a greater burden to me. I wondered wanly if I would ever discover how to do anything well. At long last I have learned something even better - how not to do anything at all.”
―
―

“I have this lust for small talk. Nobody escapes my love.”
― The Naked Civil Servant
― The Naked Civil Servant

“Even in childhood I was mad about men in uniform.”
― The Naked Civil Servant
― The Naked Civil Servant

“If you're on a tightrope, when you first set off you don't know how much play there is in the rope. But when you get into the middle, between the ages of twenty and forty, the thing rocks like mad and it's too late to go back, even to to look back. But if you go on as carefully as you can, you see the other platform and then you just make a dash for it, not bothering what the audience thinks, or waving your arms, or looking dangerous and difficult and prodigious. What you see when you get to the other side is, in fact, the edge of your coffin. And you get into it, and you lie down, and you think; my cuffs are frayed, I haven't written to my mother and all those other things. And then you think; it doesn't matter. Because I'm dead. And this is a message of hope. It will come to an end. It will come, we cannot be blamed for it and we shall be free”
―
―

“You must make small steps into the air of being yourself. Find yourself in an empty landscape, build your character, and then spend the rest of your life demonstrating it.”
― The Last Word: An Autobiography
― The Last Word: An Autobiography
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