Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.

There's a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.

Life should serve up its feast of experience in a series of courses.

Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.

Heaven lies around us in our infancy.

As soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn't seen him on their box, buy the paperback.

But forgiveness must not only be given but received also.