The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.

Yes, and because we grow old we become more and more the stuff our forbears put into us. I can feel his savagery strengthen in me. We think we are so individual and so misunderstood when we are young; but the nature our strain of blood carries is inside there, waiting, like our skeleton.

An artist's saddest secrets are those that have to do with his artistry.

Where there is great love there are always miracles.

William Tavener never heeded ominous forecasts in the domestic horizon, and he never looked for a storm until it broke.

In little towns, lives roll along so close to one another; loves and hates beat about, their wings almost touching.

[Mark Twain] is still the rough, awkward, good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands when he was three years old. Thoroughly likeable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters.