As for Me and My House

He never unbends to Paul completely anyway. I detect just the faintest air of condescension when they’re together, the natural conviction of superiority that it seems a man of six foot three can’t help feeling over a man just five foot seven and a half.

Hypocrisy wears hard on a man who at heart isn’t that way.

It's like being lost, and coming on an old wagon trail. You don't know where it leads, how long or why it's been abandoned, but at least it's a trail.

It’s an immense night out there, wheeling and windy. The lights on the street and in the houses against the black wetness, little unilluminating glints that might be painted on it. The town seems huddled together, cowering on a high tiny perch, afraid to move lest it topple into the wind.

Religion and art [...] are almost the same thing anyway. Just different ways of taking a man out of himself, bringing him to the emotional pitch that we can ecstasy or rapture.

It’s only since we’ve had Steve with us that I’ve realized how much of himself a man has to give before he’s really possessed. I used to think it was possession because we lived together as man and wife. I didn’t know how little it can amount to wanting a woman at night, putting up with her in the daytime.

Life has proved bitter and deceptive to Philip because of the artist in him, because he has kept seeking a beauty and significance that isn’t life’s to give; but Steve is a shrewd little realist, who, given opportunity to meet life on its own terms, ought to make a fair success of it.

A man’s tragedy is himself, not the events that overtake him, and the same Main Street slight and condescension that put cloud over Philip for life, Steve is emerging from already and shaking off.

I don’t know what the solution is. Surely there’s more than one way for a man like Philip to earn his living. Surely something can be done to make him realize it. Because you’re a hypocrite you lose self-respect, because you lose your self-respect you lose your initiative and self-belief – it’s the same vicious circle, every year closing in a little tighter. Already it’s making him morose and cynical – smaller than he ought to be. I can’t help wondering what he’ll be like ten years from now.

This horse is good for him. Good for his self-respect. You can’t ride a horse and feel altogether worthless, or be altogether convinced that society’s little world is the last world.

His eyes were narrowed as he spoke, bitten a little with perplexity at the uselessness of being right against the world.