"It's this rotten pose of patriotism. They get it from each other, like--like a skin disease. No wonder it makes Michael sick."
"Men going out--thousands and thousands and thousands--to be cut about and blown to bits, and their women safe at home, snuffling and sentimentalizing--
"Lying--lying--lying."
"Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't tell one big, thumping, sacred lie, if it sends them off happy?"
"But we're not lying. It's the most real thing that ever happened to us. I'm glad Nicky's going. I shall be glad all my life."
"It comes easy to you. You're a child. You've never grown up. You were a miserable little mummy when you were born. And now you look as if every drop of blood was drained out of your body in your teens. If that's your tremendous secret you can keep it yourself. It seems to be all you've got."
"If it wasn't for Aunt Frances and Uncle Anthony it would have been all I've got."
Vera looked at her daughter and saw her for the first time as she really was. The child was not a child any more. She was a woman, astonishingly and dangerously mature. Veronica's sorrowful, lucid eyes took her in; they neither weighed her nor measured her, but judged her, off-hand with perfect accuracy.
"Poor little Ronny. I've been a beastly mother to you. Still, you can thank my beastliness for Aunt Frances and Uncle Anthony."
Veronica thought: "How funny she is about it!" She said, "It's your beastliness to poor Larry that I mind. You know what you're keeping him for."