'Oh, poor, poor fellow!' said Mrs. Elliot with a remorse that was sincere, though her congratulations would not have been.

It is the function of the novelist to reveal the hidden life at its source: to tell us more about Queen Victoria than could be known, and thus to produce a character who is not the Queen Victoria of history.

This element of surprise or mystery — the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called — is of great importance in a plot. It occurs through a suspension of the time-sequence; a mystery is a pocket in time, and it occurs crudely, as in "Why did the queen die?" and more subtly in half-explained gestures and words, the true meaning of which only dawns pages ahead. Mystery is essential to a plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence.

Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce "boum.

I never could get on with representative individuals but people who existed on their own account and with whom it might therefore be possible to be friends.

The bully and his victim never quite forget their first relations.

When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.