My field-mouse had made a set of brand-new tracks; here and there they etched themselves, following the brown flowers. It seemed as if uncommon spirits had seized their little maker, for sometimes he had leaped a yard, the festive mite! There was no other track pursuing; the leaps must have been mere joy.

Fingers get habits - have memories of their own.

Songs are usually unfit for whistling - indeed, whistling (except to the person doing it) is unbearable.

November at its best - with a sort of delightful menace in the air.

the breeze brought us a faint sound, as of a distant rat, a huge and mystic rat, gnawing, maybe, at the horizon!

With writing ... you must keep in the habit. After a lapse it will take you not an hour, but a week, a month, maybe, to find your mood again - that mood in which things drop from heaven. There's no forcing it; you can't set your notions in front of you, and stare at them till they take shape; they have to come to you whether you ask them or not. ... And you have to be in the habit of that mood! Of inspiration!

What a strange joy it was to talk, to fish gleefully into the past and fling its fragments about us, with the unfailing aroma of pleasantness that pasts always seem to possess!