“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”

“Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.”

“What is he to learn? To imitate? Or to avoid? When your friends the bees worry themselves about their sovereign, and become perfectly distracted touching the slightest monarchical movement, are we ...”

“What greater gift than the love of a cat.”

“...I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday - the longer, the better - from the great boarding-school, where we are for...”

“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then....”

“Most people just want to be left in peace to eat their bacon, not realising that there is no peace behind bacon.”

“the serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.”

“Even apocalypse looks less dire when viewed over a plate of bacon.”

“In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.”

“Tonight, however, Dickens struck him in a different light. Beneath the authors sentimental pity for the weak and helpless, he could discern a revolting pleasure in cruelty and suffering, while the ...”

“I like Mr. Dickens books much better than yours, Papa. Said one of Thackerays daughters.”

“Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together.”

“Good literature is one key to peace. When we stop reading each other, when we stop paying attention to each other's words and stories, we too easily oppose one another.”

“There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book tak...”