Marriage is an honorable estate and should not be used simply as an excuse for legal intercourse.

Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.

Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time.

For a taste that's a bit more distinct, eat a bird before it's extinct.

Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms—of life, of love, of knowledge—has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, O’er a plan to venge myself upon that cursed Thursday Next- This Eyre affair, so surprising, gives my soul such loath despising, Here I plot my temper rising, rising from my jail of text. “Get me out!” I said, advising, “Pluck me from this jail of text- or I swear I’ll wring your neck!

I could almost see common sense and denial fighting away at each other within her. In the end, denial won, as it so often does.