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

Mind, I am not preaching anything contrary to accepted morality. I am not advocating free love in this or any other case. Society must go on, I suppose, and society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too-truthful are condemned to suicide and madness.

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.

Yes, a war is inevitable. Firstly, there's you fellows who can't be trusted. And then there's the multitude who mean to have bathrooms and white enamel. Millions of them; all over the world. Not merely here. And there aren't enough bathrooms and white enamel in the world to go round.

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

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

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