“It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.”

“A quarter past three," she exclaimed, catching sight of the bedside clock. "What a time to be drinking tea!"
"Anytime," Harold told her, "is time to be drinking tea.”

“My books must be an absolute nightmare to translate. I wouldn't do it. I had a couple of them in Japanese some years ago and my wife met a Japanese woman who said that she had read the books. And she asked her what the translations were like. This woman said they were the worst translation she had ever read in her life. She said she didn't recognise the books when she finally read them in English.”

“I started my Love Class as a result of the suicide of one of my most talented students. She showed no sign of her despair. Then one day she took her life. I had to ask, "What's the good of all our learning, knowing how to read and write and spell if no one ever teaches us the value of life, of our uniqueness, and personal dignity?"”

“I am the funniest woman that you've ever known.
I am the dullest woman that you've ever known.
I'm the most gorgeous woman that you've ever known and you've never met anyone
Who is as everything as I am sometimes.”

“Tibby cried into her soup when it finally came. "I'm scared…," she told it. The carrots and peas made no reply, but she felt better for having told them.”

“Only five books tonight, Mommy," she says.
No, Olivia, just one."
How about four?"
Two."
Three."
Oh, all right, three. But that's it!”

“I had a brother once, he drowned in a bathtub,
before he'd ever learned how to talk.
And I don't know what his name was
but my mother does,
I heard her say it once, she said,
"Padraic, my prince, I have all but died from the sheer weight of my shame:
you cried but no-one came."”

“If I ever saw my muse she would be an old woman with a tight bun and spectacles poking me in the middle of the back and growling, "Wake up and write the book!”

“Marie falls back upon her idea, obdurately, and says, "A woman only lives by love and for love. When she's no longer good for that she's no longer anything."
She repeats, "You see — I'm nothing any more."
Ah, she is at the bottom of her abyss! She is at the extremity of a woman's mourning! She is not thinking only of me. Her thought is higher and vaster. She is thinking of all the woman she is, of all that love is, of all possible things when she says, "I'm no longer anything." And I — I am only he who is present with her just now, and no help whatever is left her to look for from any one.
I should like to pacify and console this woman who is gentleness and simplicity and who is sinking there while she lightly touches me with her presence — but exactly because she is there I cannot lie to her, I can do nothing against her grief, her perfect, infallible grief.
"Ah!" she cries, "if we came to life again!"”