The clever way death cuts us down, but makes it look like just a thinning-out. Generations never fall with one blow - that would be too sad and too obvious. Death prefers to do it piecemeal. The meadow is attacked from several sides at the same time. One of us goes one day; another some time afterwards; you have to stand back and look around you to take in what's missing, to grasp the vast slaughter of your generation.

Suffering is nothing. It's all a matter of preventing those you love from suffering.

Poets are people who can still see the world through the eyes of children.

Children are like grown people; the experience of others is never of any use to them.

Hate is the wrath of the weak.

There is often seen this anomaly in women, especially in those of childish natures,--that they possess at once great promptness and unskilfulness in falsehood.

My imagination doesn't require anything more of the book than to provide a framework within which it can wander.