Novels, since the birth of the genre, have been full of rejected, seduced, and abandoned maidens, whose proper fate is to die.

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.

How unjust life is, to make physical charm so immediately apparent or absent, when one can get away with vices untold for ever.

Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary: It is, perpetually, a dangerous place.

Scenery can be a violent stimulant.

Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all.

The human mind can bear plenty of reality but not too much intermittent gloom.

The women are always vixens or monsters. They can't just be normal people in the book.

Nothing fails like failure

Why can't people be both flexible and efficient?

Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.

...once again I saw that incredulous question, that dawning hope: We are not alone, then? We have brothers in other places? We have friends we never knew?

When you've only got two choices, and you don't like either of them, make a third choice.

'Chance the Rapper' is many things. I'm constantly evolving.

People take things a little too personal. I write these songs, and they're experiments with thoughts. That's it. I'm not a teacher.

I think human beings exist in a social world. I write realistic fiction, and so it isn't that surprising that the social realities of their existence would be part of the story.

And there's Ray Clemence looking as cool as ever out in the cold.

There is something in omens.

The first questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child.

In New York, you're forced to deal with life; it's there in front of you on a daily basis.

Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.