That was the trouble with experience; it taught you that most people were capable of anything, so that loyalty was never quite on firm ground -- or, rather, became a matter of pardoning offenses instead of denying their existence.

Nothing creates such untruth in you as the wish to please.

For most people it's easier to support an eminent person in deserved disgrace than an obscure one who has been wronged.

I have a superstition that if I talk about plot, it's like letting sand out of a hole in the bottom of a bag.

One would always want to think of oneself as being on the side of love, ready to recognize it and wish it well -but, when confronted with it in others, one so often resented it, questioned its true nature, secretly dismissed the particular instance as folly or promiscuity. Was it merely jealousy, or a reluctance to admit so noble and enviable a sentiment in anyone but oneself?

Children seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives, humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world.

It's nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of.