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

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.

It's the quality of harmony, sir. The quality of being in harmony with you own soul. God having given you your own soul you are then in harmony with Heaven.

The war had made a man of him! It had coarsened him and hardened him. There was no other way to look at it. It had made him reach a point at which he would no longer stand unbearable things.

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.

The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!

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