I am for the ones who represent sense, and so was Jane Austen.

... it was religion that saved me. Our ugly church and parochial school provided me with my only aesthetic outlet, in the words ofthe Mass and the litanies and the old Latin hymns, in the Easter lilies around the altar, rosaries, ornamented prayer books, votive lamps, holy cards stamped in gold and decorated with flower wreaths and a saint's picture.

The only form of action open to a child is to break something or strike someone, its mother or another child; it cannot cause things to happen in the world.

If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil; never anticipate it.

Driving a car, you are in danger of killing; walking or standing, of being killed.

Whenever in history, equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.

The perennial wonder of Venice is to peer at herself in her canals and find that she exists-incredible as it seems. It is the same reassurance that a looking-glass offers us: the guarantee that we are real.