Most damning of phrases: He meant well.

. . . the first spring in five free from the rumour of guns across the Channel, a spring anxious to make up for the cold winter, life bursting out after four years of death. All of England raised her face to the sun. . .

I took to the Bodleian Library as to a lover and ... would sit long hours in Bodley's arms, to emerge, blinking and dazed with the smell and feel of all those books.

...but somehow the madness around me and the turmoil I carried within myself acted as counterweights, and I survived in the centre.

Using insult instead of argument is the sign of a small mind.

When you're putting together a story, sometimes you just have to skip over the boring bits.

The hand of bone and sinew and flesh achieves its immortality in taking up a pen. The hand on a page wields a greater power than the fleshly hand ever could in life.