I heard yesterday that Murray has sold in a week the whole edition of 1500 copies of my book, and the sale so pressing that he has agreed with Clowes to get another edition in fourteen days!
— from Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters by Charles Darwin

“You will, of course, understand, sir,” remarked Paul, “that there is not much chance of my being able to save sufficient to meet this bill in four months, so that the date is a mere form.”
— from Caught in the Net by Emile Gaboriau

I was so sick—expecting to go blind and “lift the cover of my brains,” as the Spaniards say, and also ill-treated—that I had no spirit left to write.
— from The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, Volume 1 by Elizabeth Bisland