What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme - courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe - marriage.

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.

The idea of seeing the sea - of being near it - watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight, and noonday - in calm, perhaps in storm - fills and satisfies my mind.

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.

Oh madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!

Good-night, my-" He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.

Better to be without logic than without feeling.

God did not give me my life to throw it away.

What you want to ignite in others must first burn inside yourself.

No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible!

The mother-in-law came round last week. It was absolutely pouring down. So I opened the door and I saw her there and I said, 'Mother, don't just stand there in the rain. Go home.'

Remember, care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving.

I would much rather have regrets about not doing what people said, than regretting not doing what my heart led me to and wondering what life had been like if I'd just been myself.

Sensuality reconciles us with the human race. The misanthropy of the old is due in large part to the fading of the magic glow of desire.

"Cracking the Ice" scores the literary equivalent of a hat-trick: funny, harrowing and finally, heartfelt. This book is a winner.

Giving someone the freedom to take responsibility releases resources that would otherwise remain concealed.

And I tell myself, a moon will rise from my darkness.

I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister. Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first.

Love tends to end in a very painful goodbye.