Julia Sands

“It went automatically to a heavy-weight mother with beetling eyebrows who looked as if she had just come from doing a spot of knitting at the foot of the guillotine.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“What was the secret of Grandpa's charm? I began to understand only years later. He possessed a quality that is hardly ever found among men, a marvelous quality that for many women is the sexiest in a man:

He listened.

He did not just politely pretend to listen, while impatiently waiting for her to finish what she was saying and shut up.

He did not break into his partner's sentence and finish it for her.

He did not cut in to sum up what she was saying so as to move on to another subject.

He did not let his interlocutress talk into thin air while he prepared in his head the reply he would make when she finally finished.

He did not pretend to be interested or entertained, he really was. Nu, what: he had an inexhaustible curiosity.

He was not impatient. He did not attempt to deflect the conversation from her petty concerns to his own important ones.

On the contrary: he loved her concerns. He always enjoyed waiting for her, and if she needed to take her time he took pleasure in all her contortions.

He was in no hurry, and he never rushed her. He would wait for her to finish, and even when she had finished, he did not pounce or grab but enjoyed waiting in case there was something more, in case she was carried along on another wave.

He loved to let her take him by the hand and lead him to her own places, at her own pace. He loved to be her accompanist.

He loved getting to know her. He loved to understand, to get to the bottom of her. And beyond.”
― Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness

“And now, said Ada, Van is going to stop being vulgar—I
mean, stop forever! Because I had and have and shall always
have only one beau, only one beast, only one sorrow, only one joy.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

“To use the majesty of law for revenging any petty act of private spite is to make a public confession of weakness, cowardice and an ignoble spirit.”
― Robert Graves, I, Claudius