Quote by Alan Bradley

“There were some that were of so rare a beauty that my pleasure on catching sight of them was enhanced by surprise. By what…

— Marcel Proust

“The noise of drinking was exhilarating. Champagne corks popped and the pale, chrysanthemum-coloured liquid, whispering gleefully with bubbles, hissed into the glasses; heavy red…

— Gerald Durrell

“While dragging herself up she had to hang onto the rail. Her twisted progress was that of a cripple. Once on the open deck…

— Vladimir Nabokov

[On hearing that Clare Boothe Luce was invariably kind to her inferiors:] And where does she find them?

— Dorothy Parker

“Bouchalka was not a reflective person. He had his own idea of what a great prima donna should be like, and he took it…

— Willa Cather

“He saw a chamber, broad and low, designed, in its every rich stain of picture and slumberous hanging, to appeal to the sensuous. And…

— Bernard Capes

“Her face was fragile and mischievous, pale enough to absorb hues from the world around her-purple, green, pink-like a face painted by Lucian Freud.”

— Jennifer Egan

“Tamsin gave a strangled cry, sweeping her arm across her cluttered tabletop, relishing the chaos and clatter of her belongings tumbling to the stone…

— Adrienne Tooley

“The old seraph, parcel-gilded, among violets Inhaled the appointed odor, while the doves Rose up like phantoms from chronologies.”

— Wallace Stevens

“She had had the idea that the mineral world was a world of perfect, inanimate forms, with an unchanging mathematical order of crystals and…

— A.S. Byatt

“How wonderful to find in living creatures the same substance as those which make up minerals. Nevertheless they felt a sort of humiliation at…

— Gustave Flaubert

“Her husband's visage captivated her from the first moment she saw him step out of the royal carriage a hundred years ago. How could…

— Therisa Peimer