Charles Finch said this quote

“ The Bodleian above anything else made Oxford what it was . . . There was something incommunicably grand about it, something difficult to understand unless you had spent your evenings there or walked past it on the way to celebrate the boat race, a magic that came from ignoring it a thousand times a day and then noticing its overwhelming beauty when you came out of a tiny alley and it caught you unexpectedly. A library--it didn't sound like much, but it was what made Oxford itself. The greatest library in the world. ”

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‎He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.

~ Charles Finch

‎'He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.

~ Charles Finch

Are you going to give a speech?' she asked gaily.He gave a choked laugh. 'Of course not,' he said. 'Not for ages.''My cousin Davey gave one on his very first day!' ...'In the Lords, I remember. It was about how he didn't like strawberry jam.''Be nice, Charles! It was a speech about fruit importation, which I admit devolved into something of a tirade.' She couldn't help but laugh. 'Still, you could talk about something more important.''Than jam? Impossible. We mustn't set the bar too high, Jane.

~ Charles Finch

There are a lot of ways for a novelist to create suspense, but also really only two: one a trick, one an art.The trick is to keep a secret. Or many secrets, even. In Lee Child’s books, Jack Reacher always has a big mystery to crack, but there are a series of smaller mysteries in the meantime, too, a new one appearing as soon as the last is resolved. J. K. Rowling is another master of this technique — Who gave Harry that Firebolt? How is Rita Skeeter getting her info?The art, meanwhile, the thing that makes “Pride and Prejudice” so superbly suspenseful, more suspenseful than the slickest spy novel, is to write stories in which characters must make decisions. “Breaking Bad” kept a few secrets from its audience, but for the most part it was fantastically adept at forcing Walter and Jesse into choice, into action. The same is true of “Freedom,” or “My Brilliant Friend,” or “Anna Karenina,” all novels that are hard to stop reading even when it seems as if it should be easy.

~ Charles Finch