Jane

“If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

“I'm glad you like adverbs — I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.”
― Henry James

“Don’t you think the stairs are a good place for reading letters? I do. One is somehow suspended. One is on neutral ground - not in one’s own world nor in a strange one. They are an almost perfect meeting place. Oh Heavens! How stairs do fascinate me when I think of it. Waiting for people - sitting on strange stairs - hearing steps far above, watching the light playing by itself - hearing - far below a door, looking down into a kind of dim brightness, watching someone come up. But I could go on forever. Must put them in a story though! People come out of themselves on stairs - they issue forth, unprotected.”
― Katherine Mansfield, Letters and Journals

“The clouds had gathered, within the last half-hour. The light was dull; the distance was dim. The lovely face of Nature met us, soft and still and colourless – met us without a smile.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone