Heaven preserve me from littleness and pleasantness and smoothness. Give me great glaring vices, and great glaring virtues, but preserve me from the … - Violet Keppel Trefusis

In each human being there is an emergency exit: that is, the cult of self under a multitude of manifestations, which means that when an obsession becomes too violent, you can escape, vanish with a snicker.

The following evening John left with Lady Shorne for the south of France, without so much as a word to me. Alexa felt as if she were hearing that fateful cliche for the first time. "Without so much as a word." No matter how much she tried to see it from every point of view, its meaning was always clear. John was a coward. Anne was his victim. The roles were the opposite of what she had supposed. It was Anne who had been heroic, not John. John was a coward, a mere puppet into whom both Anne and Alexa had managed to breathe a semblance of life. He was as much the creation of one as of the other.

You are my lover and I am your mistress and kingdoms and empires and governments have tottered and succumbed before now to that mighty combination.