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1 " If we do not alter with the times, the times yet alter us. We may stand perfectly still, but our surroundings shift round and we are not in the same relationship to them for long; just as a chameleon, matching perfectly the greenness of a leaf, should know that the leaf will one day fade. "
― Elizabeth Taylor , A Game of Hide and Seek
2 " Another day is another world. The difference between foreign countries is never so great as the difference between night and day. Not only are the landscape and the light changed, but people are different, relationships which the night before had progressed at a sudden pace, appear to be back where they were. Some hopes are renewed, but others dwindle: the state of the world looks rosier and death further off; but the state of ourselves and our loves and ambitions seems more prosaic. We begin to regret promises, as if the influence of darkness were like the influence of drink. We do not love our friends so warmly: or ourselves. Children feel less need of their parents: writers tear up the masterpiece they wrote the night before. "
3 " And the idea of him ever since. . . . Our feelings about people change as we grow up: but if we are left with an idea instead of a person, perhaps that never changes. After every mistake Charles made, I expect you thought: 'Vesey wouldn't have done that.' But an idea can't ever make mistakes. He led a perfect life in your brain. When he turned up again, the climate was right for him, tempered by your imagination. But his climate isn't right for you. "
4 " Success is always less awkward. It does not make claims upon pity or tact: congratulations are easier to give than condolences. "
5 " It is dangerous to think people human, who once have been divine. "
6 " Those magazines in hairdressers'," she went on. "Those letters readers write in about their problems. 'Is this love? Am I in love?' As if love were a special kind of fish one catches in one's net . .. sorting through a handful of weeds, wondering 'Is this the right thing? Is this what I am after?' But how can you catch what is only a mood, or a reflection of yourself? Forbidden fruit would be just as boring as the other kind if we ate it all the time. "
7 " Departure in the afternoon is depressing to those who are left. The day is so dominated by the one who has gone and, although only half-done, must be got through with that particular shadow lying over it. "
8 " Perhaps as a result of years with his mother, he was very prone to take things as a reproach. "
9 " There were no more long summers. The last was when she had played hide-and-seek with Vesey and the children. Since then the years had slipped by, each growing shorter than the one before. It had not seemed a long time, her married life. Summer and winter had run into one another. Betsy had not so much grown up as unrolled – as if she were all there at the beginning, but that each birthday unrolled more of her, made more visible, though suggesting more. "
10 " I am sorry my commonsense is so common, but I have to be cruel to be kind. "
