Intricately plotted, beautifully paced, The Music of the Spheres is an elegant historical novel rich in detail, at times Dickensian in its description of London. Elizabeth Redfern has made an exciting debut.

Most people see what they want to, or at least what they expect to.

Remember the great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There's a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo's role through trickery & then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing & blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her & says, I ran all the way. That's what I want

Writing is an antisocial act.

You can't be blocked if you just keep on writing words. Any words. People who get 'blocked' make the mistake of thinking they have to write good words.

writers just kept on staring at nothing until they wrote something. Might be two minutes or two weeks.

Silence is a way of saying: we do not have to entertain each other we are okay as we are.

The English inn stands permanently planted at the confluence of the roads of history, memory, and romance.

You can never do enough for the dead. You search around for comfort but there is no comfort there never was and never will be. There is only a gradual wearing away of the sharp edges, so that you don't feel ambushed at every turn, as if you saw the dead suddenly rounding the corner.

Before you hate something you should try to understand it.

Children can ask what adults don't dare to because we don't want to admit we're scared and we don't really want to hear the answers.

And so it continued all day, wynde after wynde, From a room beyond came the whistle of a teakettle. Now, you really must join me. I've some marvelous Darjeeling, and some delicious petit fours a friend of mine gave me for Christmas.

Elf made his way fuzzily back to the drawer, trying to think nasty thoughts about his tormentor (Mungo the dog) but he couldn't, as he was too little and his mind was formless and without messages.( Elf the tiny kitten Mungo tormented )

We don't know who we are until we see what we can do.