"I have been at great pains to avoid the sort of female who is always in love with a man, and always talking of him, and always wishing to marry him."

"I will not say that your mulberry-trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive."

"I am not at all in a humour for writing, I am tired of it."

"I have been so much engaged on other things that I have not been able to do any thing to my novel for a long time."

"Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken."