"And really, all queers do like trouble."

I've been reading Iris Murdoch's A Fairly Honourable Defeat:

“Perhaps it was silly to invite Simon and Axel to drinks this evening.”
“Why? It’s a moment for family.”
“Axel is so anti-family. He’s the sort of queer who doesn’t like to be reminded of normal relationships.”
“I could hardly invite Simon without him. They are so very married.”
“I sometimes feel Axel hates to see a successful heterosexual marriage. He would like all men to leave all women.”
“Nonsense, Hilda. He can even be quite conventional and high-minded about it. You remember how shocked he was at Morgan leaving Tallis?”“That was because he likes Tallis and dislikes Morgan.”
“Well, he doesn’t dislike you.”
“I know. He’s another ironical devil. But I am rather fond of him. Do you think that ménage will last?”
“Why not? It’s lasted more than three years. I don’t see why it shouldn’t go on.”
“Those queer friendships are so unstable.”
“That’s simply because they run more hazards of an external social kind, Hilda. Heterosexual relations would be just as unstable if it were not for the institution of marriag and the procreation of children. But if people suit each other why shouldn’t they stay together?”

“Do you think you and I would have stayed together all these years if we hadn’t the blessing of society?”

“Yes, I do, my darling wife. Don’t you?”

“Yes, I do, Rupert. Angel! But we’re a special case, as we’ve already agreed, and we’re so unlike in some ways. Axel and Simon are so different. Axel must be a very difficult man to live with. He’s so gloomy and morose. And Simon is so sensitive and childlike and sort of pleasure-loving. I don’t mean this in a bad sense. And really, all queers do like trouble. I’ve never met one who didn’t.”
“Any sentence beginning ‘All queers…’ is pretty sure to be false! It’s like ‘All married men…’ ‘All married men over forty deceive their wives.’”
“Well, we know that’s false! But I’m sure Axel bullies him.”
“Some people like to be bullied.”
“I suppose they do. And of course he is so much younger than Axel. Thank heavens our relationship is democratic. I suspect they quarrel bitterly every night and still love each other.”
“We don’t quarrel every night, thank God. And if we did I would take it as evidence against the view that we loved each other.”
“There are all kinds of marriages.”
“You are incurable compassionate, Rupert.”

The above portrait is by Tom Phillips, whose brief but moving remembrance of painting and working with Murdoch can be read here.