He looked very old. He looked, James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was always at the back of both of their minds—that loneliness which was for both of them the truth about things.

It's too short,' she said, 'ever so much too short.' Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.

Fatigue is the safest sleeping draught.

...It struck her, this was tragedy-- not palls, dust, and the shroud; but children coerced, their spirits subdued.

It flattered her, where she was most susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound about in their hearts, however long they lived she would be woven...

Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.