Goldfish

'He [James Joyce] might have been entitled to feel safe from ineffables like yourself who imagine that art is something that a good education automatically entitles you; that it is a part of a social equipment, class aptitude, like painting water-colours was for a Victorian gentlewoman! I can imagine his poor heart sinking as he studied your face, with its expression of wayward condescension - the fathomless self-esteem which one sees occasionally flit across the face of a goldfish with a hereditary title.' After this we never spoke, which was what I wanted. The art of making necessary enemies!

Lawrence Durrell, "Clea", The Alexandria Quartet, Faber & Faber, 2009 (primeira publicação: 1960)