The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything.

To take for granted one's blessings is a damage to the soul, and in time one will lose them, simply from lack of care. One should never tire of nourishing and treasuring all that is lovely.

A good library can provide the furniture of our minds and the threads from which we weave our dreams.

some kinds of beauty did not heal, but hollowed the pain even deeper.

People only tell lies when the truth is disagreeable to them, or frightens them, or to cover sin.

I was born in London, England, in 1938, a few months before the war, and spent the first years of my life there, although I was evacuated a couple of times for short periods. My schooling was very interrupted, both by frequent moves and by ill health.

Americans sometimes say to me that they have no class system themselves. All human beings have class systems. It can be based on a different thing in a different country, but the thing about breeding is, you can't buy it. You can't buy class.