The bowl landed, in glorious perfection, atop the head of Mrs Barnaclegoose, who was not the kind of woman to appreciate the finer points of being crowned by trifle.

Steampunk is...the love child of Hot Topic and a BBC costume drama

It's no good choosing your first husband from a school for evil geniuses. Much too difficult to kill.

No one ever explained the octopuses.

I am rather fond of ladybugs. They are so delightfully hemispherical.

I suspect it may be like the difference between a drinker and an alcoholic; the one merely reads books, the other needs books to make it through the day.

How ghastly for her, people actually thinking, with their brains, and right next door. Oh, the travesty of it all.

The ill-informed masses included her own family among their ranks, a family that specialized in being both inconvenient and asinine.

Alexia figured, delightedly, that this meant he did, in fact, tend to traipse around his private apartments in the altogether. Marriage was becoming more and more of an attractive prospect.

Conall,” “Aye, Alexia?” He looked up at her. Was that fear in his caramel eyes? “I am going to take advantage of you,” she said

She took a moment to lament her lack of parasol. Every time she left the house, she felt keenly the absence of her heretofore ubiquitous accessory.

They told us love was a disease. They told us it would kill us in the end.For the very first time I realize, that this, too, might also be a lie.

She takes your voice and leaves you howling at the moon.

Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?

Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing.

I don't really recognise success. I don't see myself as on an upwardly mobile trajectory. I see myself as on the edge of a cliff about to fall off.

You can't stop father time... but you can show [him] down.

It's been so long since you last saw each other. She could at least smile.

I will leave the U.S Congress when the term for which I was elected expires in January 2011 and return to the practice of law with a sense of duty fulfilled

How strange it is that life must be nearly over, before one fully learns to live!

All I want is to be more famous than anything or anyone.