She recognised in Mr Honey a man of moods, capable of deep depression; all geniuses, she had read, were men like that. - Nevil Shute

She did not understand what all that meant, but it was evidently something very near his heart, and so she said, "How splendid!"

For many years the actress had been out of touch with the hard realities of life. All her working life had been spent in the facile world of honky-tonk, of synthetic emotion and of phoney glamour. Now she was getting a glimpse into a new world, a world of hard, stark facts, a world in which things had to be exactly right or people would be killed. She was beginning to perceive that little insignificant men like Mr Honey were the brains behind that world.

You can't go through life sitting on the fence. You've got to make decisions, and sometimes you're pretty sure to make them wrong.