“Truly Alice, books are wonderful things; to sit alone in a room and laugh and cry, because you are reading, and still be safe when you close the book; and having finished it, discover you are changed, yet unchanged! To be able to visit the City of Invention at will, depart at will – that is all, really, education is about, should be about.”

“Truly, books are wonderful things; to sit alone in a room and laugh and cry, because you are reading, and still be safe when you close the book; and having finished it, discover you are changed, yet unchanged!”

“Worry less about what other people think about you, and more about what you think about them.”

“I do use husbands a bit (in books). It's what writers of this kind do, actually. I am quite careful to try to keep the family out of my writing. You find, on the whole, that men will forgive you everything if you say they are good in bed and the women if you say they are beautiful. It's the way to turn away wrath.”

“Do not despair, little Alice. Only persist, and thou shalt see, Jane Austen's all in all to thee.”

“I think it's important to go (to church every Sunday) and sit and think about something other than yourself, pray for the sick, consider the dead.”

“You don't go to church for intellectual gratification - you go because it pleases your aesthetic sensibilities.”