Character Quote by Francette Phal

“And he’d grown as a cactus grows, bitter and prickly and tough enough to survive what came his way.”

— Geraldine Brooks

“I watched him, sardonic, cynical. A great poet, truly, yet unkind. The gifts of our nature seem not to modify the manner of our…

— Jeanette Winterson

“Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent…

— Henry James

“He studies virtues, vices, flaws and merits, the wisdom and puerility of others.”

— Stefan Zweig

“Things seemed to consist not of wood and stone but of some grandiose and infinitely tender immorality that, the moment it came in contact…

— Robert Musil

“Normally he was fond of most things. He was a good-natured and cheerful young man, who liked life and the great majority of those…

— P.G. Wodehouse

“Manos was an artist at manipulating people’s lives and turning everything to his advantage. He had no conscience and no remorse...”

— Angel Sefer

“This recurred to his mind unceasingly. To this celestial kindness he opposed pride, which is the fortress of evil within us. He was indistinctly…

— Victor Hugo

“A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“I didn’t have a vocabulary for what he did to me, but then no one had been able to define the man himself. An…

— Skye Warren

“One could not stand and watch very long without being philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog-squeal…

— Upton Sinclair

“An abyss of fortune or of temperament sundered him from them. His mind seemed older than theirs: it shone coldly on their strifes and…

— James Joyce