“Brilliance is impossible without a touch of insanity.”

“Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating.”

“Without error there can be no brilliancy”

“He was a thorough good sort; a bit limited; a bit thick in the head; yes; but a thorough good sort. Whatever he took up he did in the same matter-of-fact sensible way; without a touch of imagination, without a sparkle of brilliancy, but with the inexplicable niceness of his type.”

“Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Familes are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole.”

“...though the conversation always touched an exceptionally high level of brilliance, there was apt to be a good deal of sugar thrown about.”