It was the usual sort of academic battle: footnotes at ten paces, bolstered by snide articles in academic journals and lots of sniping about methodology, a thrust and parry of source and countersource. My sources had to be better.

Old books exert a strange fascination for me -- their smell, their feel, their history; wondering who might have owned them, how they lived, what they felt.

Tell them I have the headache--no, the plague! I need something nice and contagious.

Patience is only a virtue when there is something worth waiting for.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that one only comes up with clever, cutting remarks long after the other party is happily slumbering away.

It was lovely to see cynicism in one so young. It positively restored his faith in human nature.

Love doesn't attack; it infiltrates.