Then letters came in but three times a week: indeed, in some places in Scotland where I have stayed when I was a girl, the post came in but once a month;—but letters were letters then; and we made great prizes of them, and read them and studied them like books. Now the post comes rattling in twice a day, bringing short jerky notes, some without beginning or end, but just a little sharp sentence, which well-bred folks would think too abrupt to be spoken.

In every letter, in every line, she saw him. He hadn't changed - he'd only grown into the man he'd meant to be.

I wondered, however, whether I might be better off waiting to see what happened at the gig before taking things to an epistolary level. There was no need to be reckless.

I folded Lizzie into small pieces. But the letters did not stop.

The act of writing itself is like an act of love. There is contact. There is exchange too. We no longer know whether the words come out of the ink onto the page, or whether they emerge from the page itself where they were sleeping, the ink merely giving them colour.

Susie, what shall I do - there is'nt room enough; not half enough, to hold what I was going to say. Wont you tell the man who makes sheets of paper, that I hav'nt the slightest respect for him!

He wrote because he liked to write; he did not abridge, because he cared not to abridge. He sat down, he took pen and paper, because he loved Lucy and had much to say to her; because he was faithful and thoughtful, because he was tender and true.

Every body at all addicted to letter writing, without having much to say, which will include a large proportion of the female world at least…

Life is bearable when you have someone to write, and someone who writes you back. Even if it's just one person.

I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel