To consider what other people might say is hardly a good reason to take action or to defer it. You have your own life to live, Iris, and at its end, the only opinion that amounts to anything is that which God bestows

Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to impermanence.

Are you an aberration to your species?' she cried. 'Cats don't look for approval!

I like classical music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and I adore Bach above all.

Of course. You get everything from books.

It was mild monsters like these that made Jack the Ripper go after young women, she decided: who could tolerate yielding the world to someone who behaved as if she had given birth to the very world herself?

Just follow that one road the whole time!... I hope they don't get lost, I'm so bad at giving directions.