I loved Mr. Darcy far more than any of my own husbands.
It’s only by being obstinate that anything is got, or done.
Once you have felt the Indian dust, you will never be free of it.
Every piece of writing starts from what I call a grit a sight or sound, a sentence or happening that does not pass away but quite inexplicably lodges in the mind.
You can be a nuisance to your family. You mustn’t be a nuisance to your friends.
I don’t know if I believe in God, but I know I believe in the devil. I have met him.
Wanting is the beginning of getting.
Memory is the only friend of grief.
If books were Persian carpets, one would not look only at the outer side. because it is the stitch that makes a carpet wear, gives it its life and bloom.
The stitch of a book is its words.
Most grown people are like icebergs, three-tenths showing, seven-tenths submerged – that is why a collision with one of them is unexpectedly hurtful...
Every time a child, any child, is born, it is new – and different; that is the wonder.
With everything that happens to you, with everyone you meet who is important to you, you either die a little or are born.
Of course one never knows in draft if it’s going to turn out, even with my age and experience.
For an author nothing is as dead as a book once it is written.
I have never understood why “hard work” is supposed to be pitiable. True, some work is soul destroying when it is done against the grain, but when it is part of “making” how can you grudge it? You get tired, of course, but the struggle, the challenge, the feeling of being extended as you never thought you could be is fulfilling and deeply, deeply satisfying.
When one came to know them it was surprising how childish grown people could be.
I know now it is children who accept life; grown people cover it up and pretend it is different with drinks.
Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot ‘do’; they can only be done by; children who do not understand this often do wrong things, and then the dolls are hurt and abused and lost; and when this happens dolls cannot speak, nor do anything except be hurt and abused and lost. If you have any dolls, you should remember that.
I like the way everything is clear and concise, you’ll always be forgiven but you must know the rules.