In every man there are two minds that work side by side, the one checking the other; thus emotion stands against reason, intellect corrects passion and first impressions act a little, but very little, before quick reflection.

Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.

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

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.

We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.

New York is large, glamorous, easy-going, kindly and incurious, but above all it is a crucible - because it is large enough to be incurious.

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.