Sometimes snakes can’t slough. They can’t burst their old skin. Then they go sick and die inside the old skin, and nobody ever sees the new pattern. It needs a real desperate recklessness to burst your old skin at last. You simply don’t care what happens to you, if you rip yourself in two, so long as you do get out.

In my very own self, I am part of my family.

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.

The peasants of Sicily, who have kept their own wheat and make their own natural brown bread, ah, it is amazing how fresh and sweet and clean their loaf seems, so perfumed, as home-made bread used all to be before the war.

Nothing but love has made the dog lose his wild freedom, to become the servant of man.

The human being is a most curious creature. He thinks he has got one soul, and he has got dozens.

I've never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself.