Shame can kill the imagination. It's hard to keep writing in the face of cultural derision.

My duchess,” James stated, his eyes sweeping the crowd with the air of a man who has ruled the waves. “She is not a swan, because that would imply she had once been an ugly duckling.

I would prefer not to throw myself on a funeral pyre. Please come back to me.

Sometimes I spend all day in my dressing gown. But if I do dress, I make myself ravishing because then, I feel ravishing.

I do believe that his given name is something odd. Peregrine, Penrose- Piers, that's it." "He sounds like a dock." Lord Sundron put in. "Mrs. Hutchins called me a light frigate this morning," Linnet said "a dock might be just the thing for me.

If you throw me out of this house, I shall sleep on the path outside. If you return to the Continent without me, I shall follow you. I will build a willow hut at your gate; I will sleep under your window; I will be waiting for you at your own front door.

Where did you go to school?” Piers inquired. “Your all together too literate for a butler. Most bulters I know say things like as you wish, my lord, and leave it at that. Our conversations should be along these lines: Prufrock, bring me a wench and then you would say, as you wish.