One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave - our own self. Get on good terms with that companion - learn to live with yourself.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

She didn't give George any too easy a time when she was alive. She was one of those semi-invalids – I believe she had really something wrong with her, but whatever it was she played it for all it was worth. She was capricious, exacting, unreasonable. She complained from morning to night. George was expected to wait on her, hand and foot and everything he did was always wrong and he got cursed for it. Most men, I'm fully convinced, would have hit her with a hatchet long ago.

You're shocked, Mr. Burton, at hearing what our gossiping little town thinks. I can tell you this - they always think the worst!

Nobody believes in magicians any more, nobody believes that anyone can come along and wave a wand and turn you into a frog. But if you read in the paper that by injecting certain glands scientists can alter your vital tissues and you'll develop froglike characteristics, well, everybody would believe that.

Bitterness leads nowhere. It turns back on itself. It is the eternal cul-de-sac.

But surely for everything you love you have to pay some price.