“I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any. ”

“I had started out in life trusting everyone and now I trusted no one. So I had a few acquaintances and no close friends. It was perhaps in reaction against the inevitable loneliness of my life that...”

“Almost any book was better than life, Audrey thought. Or rather, life as she was living it. Of course, life would soon change, open out, become quite different. You couldn't go on if you didn't hop...”

“I had had the job for three weeks. It was dreary. You couldn't read; they didn't like it. I would feel as if I were drugged, sitting there, watching those damned dolls, thinking what a success they...”

“Well, let's argue this out, Mr Blank. You, who represent Society, have the right to pay me four hundred francs a month. That's my market value, for I am an inefficient member of Society, slow in th...”

“Anything you like; anything I like... No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us”

“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves”

“Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.”

“She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire.”

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”

“I stopped in front of a florist's window. Behind me, the screeching and throbbing boulevard vanished. Gone, too, were the voices of newspaper vendors selling their daily poisoned flowers. Facing me...”

“Daffy bent down suddenly, and picked a small startled white flower. "Anemone," he said, handing it over; he made her repeat the word until she had it right. "Find me a silk to match that.”

“I will openly admit that I've never really followed hockey. Given my New England upbringing, I have always adhered to the Celtics, Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins mantra of professional sports fandom, bu...”

“I put on lip balm first thing in the morning and always use it before I swipe on my red lipstick.”

“Scorpions like holes. We had to put our arms in the holes to dig out the smelting residues. We always performed critter checks before an excavation, but one morning, I put an arm in and felt a shar...”