The Talented Mr. Ripley

It struck Tom like a horrible truth, true for all time, true for the people he had known in the past and for those he would know in the future: each had stood and would stand before him, and he would know time and time again that he would never know them, and the worst was that there would always be the illusion, for a time, that he did know them, and that he and they were completely in harmony and alike.

He felt alone, yet not at all lonely.

Thanks for all the wonderful memories. They're like something in a museum already or something preserved in amber, a little unreal, as you must have felt yourself always to me.

Would one thing after another come up to thwart him—murder, suspicion, people?

In Europe, Tom gathered, inadequate heating was a hallmark of chic in winter, like the iceless martini in summer.

To continue with the neck-sticking, I don't say that Tom is going to do anything actively bad to you, but I know that he has a subtly bad influence on you. You act vaguely ashamed of being around him when you are around him, do you know that?

Tom cursed himself for having been so heavy-handed and so humourless today. Nothing he took desperately seriously ever worked out. He'd found that out years ago.

And it was astounding and pitiful how naive he had been, how little he had known about the way the world worked, as if he had spent so much of his time hating Aunt Dottie and scheming how to escape her, that he had not had enough time to learn and grow.

It was like looking back at another person to remember himself then, a skinny, snivelling wretch with an eternal cold in the nose, who had still managed to win a medal for courtesy, service, and reliability.

put the fear of God into him,