Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them.

The tea was a comfort - and by that time I more than needed comfort.

They call them the haunted shores, these stretches of Devonshire and Cornwall and Ireland which rear up against the westward ocean. Mists gather here, and sea fog, and eerie stories. That's not because there are more ghosts here than in other places, mind you. It's just that people who live hereabouts are strangely aware of them.

We were restless for ages...After a while I heard an owl hooting and calmed myself by thinking of it flying over the dark fields – and then I remembered it would be pouncing on mice. I love owls, but I wish God had made them vegetarian.

I know all about the facts of life, and I don't think much of them.

Perhaps what you call conventionality, I call decency.

I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.