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

If you're going to have a character appear in a story long enough to sell a newspaper, he'd better be real enough that you can smell his breath.

It was an odd friendship, but the oddnesses of friendships are a frequent guarantee of their lasting texture.

If you hunch your shoulders too long against a storm your shoulders will grow bowed.

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

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.

They were simple, earnest people, those early Victorians, and had not yet learnt the trick of avoiding disturbing thoughts and sights.