I believe that an author who cannot control her characters is, like a mother who cannot control her children, not really fit to look after them.

the old fellow seemed to spot deceit as if it reeked like a goat.

It's pitch, sex is. Once you touch it, it clings to you.

Infatuation is one of those slightly comic illnesses which are at once so undignified and so painful that a nice-minded world does its best to ignore their existence altogether, referring to them only under provocation and then with apology, but, like its more material brother, this boil on the neck of the spirit can hardly be forgotten either by the sufferer or anyone else in his vicinity. The malady is ludicrous, sad, excruciating and, above all, instantly diagnosable.

One policeman may be a friend, but two are the Law.

It was a little skirmish across a century.

If one cannot command attention by one's admirable qualities one can at least be a nuisance