The intention of any novelist must surely be to make that straight avenue to the human heart. - P. D. James

Mrs Buckley was revealed as a slight, nervous-looking woman with a small precisely formed mouth between bulging cheeks, which gave her the appearance of a hamster.

How odd, he thought, that one could get used to beauty [i.e. in one's wife]. Once he had thought that any price would be worth paying if he could possess it, know it to be exclusively his, feed on it, be comforted, exalted, even sanctified by it. But you couldn't possess beauty any more than you could possess another human being.

One of my earliest loves was the Book of Common Prayer. I was seduced by it, by its beautiful words and the sense of history.