The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it.

Mary & Tim - a 1996 adaptation of the novel Tim


Notes. In 1963 Colleen McCullough moved for four years to the United Kingdom; at the Great Ormond Street hospital in London Colleen McCullough met the chairman of the neurology department at Yale University who offered her a research associate job at Yale. Susannah Fullerton the president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia said Colleen McCullough "shuddered" that Elizabeth Bennet was rewritten as weak and Mr Darcy savage.