At a certain point my novels set. They set just as hard as that jam jar. And then I know they are finished.

A leopard does not change his spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit.

There are different kinds of wrong. The people sinned against are not always the best.

Well, Buttermere, this is a day that is good to live and breathe in, that makes a man feel in his prime. Standing here in front of my house, I feel as young as when I moved into it thirty years ago, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. What aged man would you take me to be, as I step as it were casually into your view?

You should not want to know the things in people's minds. If you were meant to hear them, they would be said.

We are always children to our mothers.

As regards plot I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots. And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge against life.