There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.

In this cruel world kindness should always be repaid.

Fate, at first so amenable, so reasonable, so open to negotiation, ends up by exacting a cruel revenge for happiness.

She could not read a book for fear of the feelings she might find in it.

My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen.

Politeness. Now there's a poor man's virtue if ever there was one. What's so admirable about inoffensiveness, I should like to know. After all, it's easily achieved. One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else. People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think about them.

Reading can be dangerous.