You transfix me quite. - Charlotte Brontë

If he were insane, however, his was a very cool and collected insanity.

But I tell you — and mark my words — you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current...

Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life.