If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.

Things might have been different if she hadn't been able to drift; if she'd had to concentrate on her next meal, instead of dwelling on all the injuries she felt we'd done her. An unearned income encourages self-pity in those already prone to it.

Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines.

My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.