'Most of times we take ourselves for granted, as we have to, and we live on a little knowledge about ourselves as we were. Who are you now? You don't know any more than I do, but rather less. You are nothing but a set of obsolete responses. The one thing to do is to do nothing. Wait. [...] Resign yourself to the fool you are. That is the but advice that I can give you' [p.27]

'We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we know them. and they have changed since then. To pretend that they are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger' [p.63]


'What is hell? Hell is one self, hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. one is always alone' [p.87]


T.S. ELIOT [1950]The Cocktail Party, London: Faber&Faber