When I am writing a novel, the setting, the characters, the action is clear in mind when I start -- so I believe. But it is only when these imaginings are written down, passing it seems almost physica...
What it was he had chiefly gained: a fascination with the complexity of the intellectual bastions which men could construct to withstand the tides of disbelief. His own disbelief had remained unshaken...
To collect me. That is what we can so easily be made to feel at seventy-three; an object, not exactly precious but likely to be brittle, to be carefully collected, conscientiously cared for and as con...
The English, thought Kate, obviously regarded praying much as they did a necessary physical function, something best done in private. Dalgliesh apologized for interrupting her work: We’re police offic...
Pleasure need not be less keen because there will be centuries of springs to come, their blossom unseen by human eyes, the walls will crumble, the trees die and rot, the gardens revert to weeds and gr...
OK, she’s dead and you feel guilty, and feeling guilt isn’t something you enjoy. Too bad. Get used to it. Why the hell should you escape guilt? It’s part of being human. Or hadn’t you noticed?
I can never see why people should be jealous. After all, youth isn't a matter of privilege, we all get the same share of it. Some people may be born at an easier time or be richer or more privileged t...
For heaven's sake, Darling, keep your crusading instinct [for social justice] under control...It's uncomfortable to live with especially for those of us who haven't got one.
But he still lingered, feeling the wind lift his hair and grateful for another minute of peace. He was grateful, too, that Kate Miskin could share it with him without the need to speak and without mak...
A number of his friends whose wilfully overburdened lives inhibited the enjoyment of all but necessary pleasures somehow found time to take afternoon tea with the Ackroyds in their neat Edwardian vill...
Neither man spoke of the past. Darcy could not rid himself of its power but Wickham lived for the moment, was sanguine about the future and reinvented the past to suit his audience, and Darcy could al...
It is doubtful whether Mrs Bennet missed the company of her second daughter, but her husband certainly did. Elizabeth had always been his favourite child.
If you stood apart long enough, weren’t you in danger of stifling, perhaps even losing, that quickening spirit which the priests here would call the soul?
I didn’t love her but I did steal for her. I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.
And would she herself have married Darcy had he been a penniless curate or a struggling attorney? ...Elizabeth knew that she was not formed for the sad contrivances of poverty.