“Cats always made up to the people who hated them the most. Depending on how you chose to look at it, it was a touching manifestation of trust, or a malicious pleasure in human discomfort.”

Martyrdom is often the result of excessive gullibility.

Sometimes the characters develop almost without your knowing it. You find them doing things you hadn’t planned on, and then I have to go back to page 42 and fix things. I’m not recommending it as a way to write. It’s very sloppy, but it works for me.

I had refused Emerson’s well-meant offers of assistance, knowing his efforts would be confined to moving the furniture to the wrong places and demanding how much longer the process would take.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be the respected patriarch of an ordinary English family.” “Very boring, Emerson.

He hesitated for a moment. Then he said softly, “I love you, Mother.” He took my hand and kissed it, and folded my fingers round the stem of the rose. He had stripped it of its thorns.

It is easier to counterfeit old age than youth.

..he continues to cling to the forlorn hope that I will turn into one of those swooning females…and fling myself squeeling at him whenever anything happens. Like all men, he clings to his illusions.

Exaggeration is the cheapest form of humor.

Is is difficult to be angry with a gentleman who pays you compliments, even impertinent compliments. Especially impertinent compliments.

A lady cannot be blamed if a master criminal takes a fancy to her.

If all else fails, we will simply have to drug our attendants, overpower the guards, raise the oppressed peasants to arms, and take over the government.

Most men are reasonably useful in a crisis. The difficulty lies in convincing them that the situation has reached a critical point

The approval of a cat cannot but flatter the recipient.

I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle…. Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself! (Amelia Peabody)

there is nothing like a garden to rest the soul.

It was hate at first sight, clean, pure and strong as grain alcohol.

A damnably readable, streamlined, yet deeply researched work. Skipping the ancestors and aftermath of conventional biography,

Above all this is the story of a touching young man who insisted on being something better than simply the smartest person in the room.

The words of love you hear, and the life you feel touching your body and soul, then you know you have discovered the great value of misfortune.

I kept having dreams all night. I thought they were touching me with their fingers. But dreams don’t have fingers, they have fists, so it must have been scorpions.

German civility, which often seems stiff to us, shows an attentive and touching respect for the person that I often prefer to our offhandedness.

She frowned.”You’re not very friendly.” I let out a short laugh.”What?I’m not friendly to a ghost who floats into my house and starts touching me?Well,excuse my rudeness but this is a little disturbing.

Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.

Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving.