Quotes from Colin Watson

Real life is disobliging. People like to think, or feel, in black and white. Having to assess the relative values of all those intermediate greys is tiresome and perplexing.

Charging commercial institutions with failure to educate public taste is an indulgence from which intellectuals will only be deterred when they grasp that a non-existant contract can be neither breached nor enforced. If commerce is to be indicted for anything, it can only be for commercialism, and whether that is a crime or not is a political question.

To tell the truth, it is regarding the physical side of marriage that I have always been apprehensive...There so seldom seems to be enough of it, said Miss Teatime.

Mr Chubb did not so much mind his subordinates being impertinent–that was, after all, a form of acknowledging inferiority; what he dreaded was that any of them might say something really funny without his recognising it.

The semicircular lawn, lightly frosted now, its flanking gravel drive and the laural-planted beds beyond, all looked sour and sullen. They wore the depressing neatness of ground laid out expressly to save the bother of gardening.

The dark laminated strands heaved, separated and became fiery filaments, then grey stamens of ash upon a glowing corolla.