La buena literatura nunca había tenido por objeto ser un ejemplo o eco de la vida real, sino que estaba hecha para abstraer al lector momentáneamente… - Colleen McCullough

We all have contempt for whatever there's too many of. Out here it's sheep, but in the city it's people.

Though they were very dissimilar in character, they also shared many tastes and appetites, and those they didn’t share they tolerated in each other with instinctive respect, as a necessary spice of difference. They knew each other very well indeed. Her natural tendency was to deplore human failings in others and ignore them in herself; his natural tendency was to understand and forgive human failings in others, and be merciless upon them in himself. She felt herself invincibly strong; he knew himself perilously weak.

Yet there's something ominous about turning sixty-five. Suddenly old age is not a phenomenon which will occur; it has occurred.