The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild.

I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.

Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us.

Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leaving it. I burst out crying.

The evening advanced. The shadows lengthened. The waters of the lake grew pitchy black. The gliding of the ghostly swans became rare and more rare.

What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their finding-places in a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!

Some of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life. Mrs Vesey sat through life.