It was a sort of peace I have rarely enjoyed since. As if we were the only two souls on earth—all of nature ours to enjoy. I wondered why a creator who had dreamt such beauty would have slandered it with such evil. Such grief. Why He had not been content to leave it unspoilt. I still wonder.

Pride and Prejudice' - perhaps more than any other Jane Austen book - is engrained in our literary consciousness.

I wrote one terrible manuscript after another for a decade and I guess they gradually got a little less terrible. But there were many, many unpublished short stories, abandoned screenplays and novels... a Library of Congress worth of awful literature.

Abraham," he said. "I'm pleased to see you alive, old friend." "And I to see you dead.

All I ask is that my final months be happy ones, and that I be permitted a husband who will see to my proper Christian beheading and burial.

Your quarrel is with God. I merely wish to offer Him the opportunity to judge you.

Contrary to his infallibly "honest" image, Abe wasn't above lying so long as it served a noble purpose.