If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple?

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

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.

...she had always known under her mind and now she confessed it: her agony had been, half of it, because one day he would say farewell to her, like that, with the inflexion of a verb. As, just occasionally, using the word 'we' - and perhaps without intention - he had let her know that he loved her.

I couldn't regard myself as personally repulsive. No man can, or, if he ever comes to do so, that is the end of him.

Damn it all, it's the first duty of a soldier - it's the first duty of all Englishmen - to be able to tell a good lie in answer to a charge.

Six months ago I had never been to England, and, certainly, I had never sounded the depths of an English heart. I had known the shallows.