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Four times, under our educational rules, the human pack is shuffled and cut – at eleven-plus, sixteen-plus, eighteen-plus and twenty-plus – and happy is he who comes top of the deck on each occasion, but especially the last. This is called Finals, the very name of which implies that nothing of importance can happen after it.

— David Lodge

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More quotes by David Lodge

I respect a man who can recognize a quotation. It's a dying art.

Small World (1984)

Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round.

Looking around at the faces of his colleagues in the Senior Common Room he felt reassured: not a Lineament of Gratified Desire to be seen.

Morris read through the letter. Was it a shade too fulsome? No, that was another law of academic life: it is impossible to be excessive in flattery of one’s peers.

I'm a bit of a deconstructionist myself. It's kind of exciting – the last intellectual thrill left. Like sawing through the branch you're sitting on.

Small World (1984)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: David Lodge (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.