Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, an that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire." (From Rebecca)

The trouble is, walking in Venice becomes compulsive once you start. Just over the next bridge, you say, and then the next one beckons.

I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls.

Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?

There is no going back in life. There is no return. No second chance.

They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. To-day, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one but lightly and are soon forgotten, but then—how a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal.