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

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

If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.

Whatever Scotland was, it was not a matriarchy; whereas the United States was a profoundly matriarchal society - and much more feminine than would be suggested by all that male bravado. That was a front, and a misleading one at that; underneath the male swagger lay a passive acceptance of female dominance - a fact not always appreciated by outsiders.

New York is a wonderful place to be up, an awful place to be down.

And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice - based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudices and muddled folk wisdom - how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!

I have three older sisters, so we were a reasonably large family and, in general, a happy one.