Wilkie Collins was a rival and competitor of Dickens. His novel Moonstone sold more copies at the time than Dickens' last two books. But that meant nothing in the long run. Right now, to be honest, Wilkie Collins is what he deserved to be back then: a footnote, an almost lost memory. And he knew he would become that.

Religion seems to have always offered us that false duality ... the silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty.

Stupidity has a price and it always gets paid.

The young remember most deeply.... When we are old and failing, it is the memories of childhood which can be summoned most clearly.

All violence flows from the same source ... the need for power. Power is the only true morality ... the only deathless god, and the appetite for violence is its only commandment.

Luckily, even as a young man not yet become himself, John Bridgens had two things besides indecision that kept him from self-destruction - books and a sense of irony.

As for the depiction of the Catholic church, it's not meant to be a prediction