Think of this- that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.

They did go on so, don't you think, those Victorian poets, they took themselves so horribly seriously," he said, pushing the lift button, summoning it from the depths.As it creaked up, Blackadder said, "That's not the worst thing a human being can do, take himself seriously.

I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.

Pedro of Portugal's rapt and bizarre declaration of love, in 1356, for the embalmed corpse of his murdered wife, Inez de Castro, who swayed beside him on his travels, leather-brown and skeletal, crowned with lace and gold circlet, hung about with chains of diamonds and pearls, her bone-fingers fantastically ringed.

And you say—so kind you are—“I love you. I love you.”—and I believe—but who is she—who is “you”?

It is odd, when I think of it, that in chess the female may make the large runs and cross freely in all ways—in life it is much otherwise.

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.