Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child Quotes

she kept sliding down, in small half-willing surrenders, till she was a heap, with the book held tiringly above her face.

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

On the stairs he was crying so much he hardly saw where he was going - not a mad boo-hoo but wailing sheets of tears, shaken into funny groans by the bump of each step as he hurried down.

She felt that at some point she must finally and formally talk to Louisa about Hubert, and ask her to acknowledge that the worst possible thing had happened to her as well.

He was asking for memories, too young himself to know that memories were only memories of memories.