Quotes for the Casual Vacancy

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“The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, were being ashamed of what they were, lying about it, trying to be somebody else.” “Honesty was Fats' currency, his weapon and defense. It frightened people when you were honest; it shocked them.” "Birth and death: there was the same consciousness of heightened existence and of her own elevated importance" (Part 1, p. 16). “Yes, well, principles are sometimes the problem, if you ask me,' said Miles. 'Often what's needed is a bit of common sense.' 'Which is the name people usually give to their prejudices,' rejoined Kay.” “Life, for Colin, was one long brace against pain and disappointment, and everybody apart from his wife was an enemy until proven otherwise.” “You want to draw a line neatly between the home-owning middle classes and the lower—’ ‘Pagford’s full of working-class people, Kay; the difference is, most of them work. D’you know what proportion of the Fields lives off benefits? Responsibility, you say: what happened to personal responsibility? We’ve had them through the local school for years: kids who haven’t got a single worker in the family; the concept of earning a living is completely foreign to them; generations of non-workers, and we’re expected to subsidize them...” “He was trying to rid himself of his own acquired middle-class reliance on words, but it was difficult to forgo a sport at which he excelled, and as he trod the polished tiles of the shopping centre forecourt, he found himself turning phrases that would blow Cubby’s self-important pretensions apart and strip him naked before a jeering public …” “He wondered whether he imagined a trace of amusement in her voice; because Skye was the soft, safe option, the place the middle-class kids went.” “‘Your birth mother,’ she said, looking at him as she had never done before,

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