The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.

There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.

Old friends, like old shoes, are comfortable. But old shoes, unlike old friends, tend not to be supportive: it is easier to stumble and sprain an ankle while wearing a pair of old shoes than it is in new shoes, with their less yielding leather.

It's through the small things that we develop our moral imagination, so that we can understand the sufferings of others.

When you allow people to do what they wish, then that is what they do. They stop doing the things they need to do.

It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.

It was easy to be moral when that was the way you felt anyway. The hard bit about morality was making yourself feel the opposite of what you really felt.