Wilkie Collins

"The actions of human beings are not invariably governed by the laws of pure reason"

"Ask yourself if there is any explanation of the mystery of your own life and death."

"Rosanna Spearman had been a thief, and not being of the sort that get up Companies in the City, and rob from thousands, instead of only robbing from one, the law laid hold of her, and the prison and t…"

"The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared."

"Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper."

"My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody."

"I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condi…"

"I confess I have often fancied myself transformed into some other person, and have felt a certian pleasure in seeing myself in my new chracter. One of our first amusements as children is to get out of…"