“Fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world.”

“My pen shall heal, not hurt.”

“Don't try to write anything you can't feel - it will be a failure - 'echoes nothing worth”

“It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never pretended, nor will ever pretend, that Emily was a proper child. Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dul...”

“There isn't any such thing as an ordinary life. (92)”

“Lovely thoughts came flying to meet me like birds. They weren't my thoughts. I couldn't think anything half so exquisite. They came from somewhere.”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“The soul, they say, is divine and the flesh is iniquity. But I am a musician and I ask this - without the wood and the strings of the violin, where would the sonata find form?”

“ I suppose that it is not so easy to go home and it takes a bit of time to make a son out of a stranger.”

“Everyone wanted me to be the bad boy, the label wanted it, the publicists wanted it, but I was just trying to be myself.”

“Every great love starts with a great story...”

“I knew, in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late: again, I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extend...”

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”