Love of privacy - perhaps because of the increasing exactions of society - has become in many people almost pathological.

Habit, of which passion must be wary, may all the same be the sweetest part of love.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Two things are terrible in childhood: helplessness (being in other people's power) and apprehension - the apprehension that something is being concealed from us because it is too bad to be told.

Good-byes breed a sort of distaste for whomever you say good-bye to; this hurts, you feel, this must not happen again.

Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realise themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt.

Jane Austen, much in advance of her day, was a mistress of the use of the dialogue. She used it as dialogue should be used-to advance the story; not only to show the characters, but to advance.