It is not merely that people must die and people must suffer, if not here, then there. But what is dreadful is that the world goes on and people go on being stupidly cruel - in the old ways and all the time.

And it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me.

But responsibility hardens the heart. It must.

You have to wait together - for a week, for a year, for a lifetime, before the final intimate conversation may be attained ... and exhausted. So that ... That in effect was love.

What then is to be the lot of Rossetti's fame and influence? 'An amateur who failed in two arts', it is true; yet it hardly harms Rossetti or touches his standing. On the contrary, it defines both very brilliantly. The small word 'failed' is a small word and little more to artists who are forever going on until they give up over a game that must be lost. Every artist, when confronted by the immensities of art, which is life, must confess to failure. A failure is a thing very relative.

Ford's last Fifth Queen novel is amazing. The whole cycle is a noble conception.

I know nothing - nothing in the world - of the hearts of men. I only know that I am alone - horribly alone.