It made me perfectly happy with my own company and perhaps was good conditioning for the protracted solitude of writing books as slowly as I do. ALAN HOLLINGHURST ClowHappyMadeOwnPerfectlyPerhapsProtractWrite
I was rather a goody-goody as a child… It was only later on I discovered that you could be naughty and get away with it. ALAN HOLLINGHURST ChildGoodyRather
she kept sliding down, in small half-willing surrenders, till she was a heap, with the book held tiringly above her face. ALAN HOLLINGHURST AboveDownHalfHeapLeptSlideSmallTingly
There was the noise itself, which he thought of vaguely as the noise of classical music, sameish and rhetorical, full of feelings people surely never had ALAN HOLLINGHURST ClassicalFullItselfNoiceRhetoricalSurelyThoughtVaguely
Now that I had actually made love, more astonishingly now that I had been made love to, the fantasies were subtly undermined. ALAN HOLLINGHURST ActualAstonishinglyBenFantasiesMadeMoreSubtlyUndermined
The squandering of brilliant technique on cheap material. ALAN HOLLINGHURST BrillantCheapMaterialSquander
I think being an only child created in me a degree of self-reliance, which I’m glad of. ALAN HOLLINGHURST BeingChildMadeRelianceSelfThink
To apologize for what you most wanted to do, to concede that it was obnoxious, boring, ‘vulgar and unsafe’ — that was the worst thing. ALAN HOLLINGHURST ApologizeConcedeMoveObnoxiousThingUnsafe
The great wisdom for writers, perhaps for everybody, is to come to understand to be at one with their own tempo. ALAN HOLLINGHURST EverybodyOneOwnPerhapsTempoWriter
