about the site evelyn waugh sebastian charles quotes links fiction disclaimer and webmistress information

Quotes

Some quotes from various sundry parts of the novel - or rather, from the first section, as I tend to lose interest after Sebastian and Charles part ways. It is their relationship, and Waugh's careful handling of it, that interests me. The novel is narrated in first person, so, unless explicitly stated otherwise, all quotes are from Charles Ryder.

'I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him. That was unavoidable for, from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities of behaviour, which seemed to know no bounds. My first sight of him was in the door of Germer's, and on that occasion I was struck less by his looks and more by the fact that he was carrying a large teddy-bear.'

'It seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known: a happy childhood,and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence.'

'I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then,when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.' ~ Sebastian

'Sebastian Contra Mundum.' - Charles' vow to Sebastian. (With Sebastian, against the world.)

More to come, when I can be bothered to find the book again.

Home