During the war some of the country’s sharpest minds had looked as if they had been dragged through a hedge backwards.

In wartime people took action because of what they believed in. In peacetime people were driven by their private concerns.

Lately Mirabelle had reflected wistfully if people even noticed her – a smartly dressed woman who came and went along the Promenade, always alone.

Wellsted will remember this moment for the rest of his life. It is the first time he desires something for himself that is not dedicated to his own advancement. It is the moment he falls in love.

He’s more a shape in a drape than a hep cat

She was herself in their company but a very specific version of herself.

It took a certain kind of person to come from luxury and seek out danger.

Sometimes a person’s first assumption was very telling. It revealed how they perceived the situation.

People see what they expect to see.

The law don’t like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.

Cases fired by emotion rather than money were dangerous.

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

You have no sense of your true duty, which is to be a man and preserve humanity. You imitate wise men so badly and bandits so well. Your movies and radio programs are full of murder.

People who don't know anything tend to make up fake rules, the real rules being considerably more difficult to learn.

They needed to grieve alone was what Tibby's dad said. Lena wondered if really there was any choice in that. Everyone grieved alone.

Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries.

Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.

They fell, but o'er their glorious grave Floats free the banner of the cause they died to save.

To make a photograph is already the first artificial act.

If it was possible for me to adopt, I probably would, but no one's going to let me adopt.

In terms of melody, I am really into great 90's melodies. I feel like there was a great focus on melody in the 90's, like 90's pop-hooks and 90's R&B hooks; I just love them.