… The only toy he cares for is a box of matches; and up the houses and barns and hayricks go, in crackling flames. That was Burgess’s distinguishing mark: the flashing smile of the fire-raiser, full of secret pleasure in mischief and destruction. Even his most loyal friends had no illusion about his favourite toys. Some were affectionate and benevolent people who wanted to help and protect him against this innate viciousness; and some were people who were mischievous and destructive but would not risk their own safety, and found a vicarious gratification in his recklessness.

—Rebecca West, The New Meaning of Treason, 1965

A true hero of our time … hip before hipsters, Rolling before the Stones, acid-head before LSD. There was not so much a conspiracy gathered round him as just decay and dissolution. It was the end of a class, of a way of life; something that would be written about … with wonder and perhaps hilarity, but still tinged with sadness, as all endings are.

—Malcolm Muggeridge, The Infernal Grove, 1973

All humanity’s misery derives from not being able to sit alone in a quiet room.

—Pascal, Pensées, 1670