Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis
(Penguin, 1953)
What messes these women got themselves into over nothing. Men got themselves into messes too, and one’s that weren’t so easily got out of, but their messes arose from attempts to satisfy real and simple needs.
Page 116.
You’ve got to take people as you find them.
Page 139.
Words change the thing.
Page 144.
The trouble with love is it gets you in such a state you can’t look at your own feelings dispassionately.
Page 144.
People get themselves all steamed up about whether they’re in love or not, and can’t work it out, and their decisions go all to pot. It’s happening every day. They ought to realize that the love part’s perfectly easy; the hard part is the working out, not about love, but about what they’re going to do.
Pages 144-145.
To write things down as luck wasn’t the same as writing them off as non-existent or in some way beneath consideration.
Page 242.