Ann: What else can one follow?
Philip: Anyway, if it doesn’t let you down, it must let you in for things.
Ann: But I like being let in for things.
Philip: I wonder your illusions aren’t threadbare by now—you use them enough.
Ann: Philip, why do you go on keeping up a silly pretence of being hard and cold and cynical and heartless? They are all such foolish things to be. People are only hard because they are frightened, and cold because they are clumsy. As for cynicism, it is so misleading; it keeps you out of touch with life.
Philip: That seems an odd remark for a Cathcart.
Ann: Uncle Bill and Aunt Emily aren’t really cynical; they are just a little out of tune with the sort of lives we live. You ought to think of them as delicious museum pieces. You watch Uncle Bill if somebody makes a pun—he glows—not because he very much likes puns, but because they make him feel young. It must be so sad to see the world drifting away out of your ken into a strange new century full of distorted angles and alien values.
Philip (violently): I don’t understand you, any of you—your uncle or your aunt or Selina.
Ann (interrupting): Selina is just very young and uncompromising—a ruthless, fastidious realist. At least she thinks she is a realist, because she can face things, but it is so easy to face things before one has ever been hurt.