Edith Wharton

The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!
-Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.
-Edith Wharton