“ There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel. ”
Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.
~ Anthony Trollope
I sometimes think you despise poetry,' said Phineas. 'When it is false I do. The difficulty is to know when it is false and when it is true.
I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.
(On Charles Dickens) It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this man’s power, that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature.
