What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?

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.

Rose doesn’t like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.

Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return -- that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth.

... for I know I shall be interrupted-- I shall want to be, really, because life is too exciting to sit still for long.

Sometimes [the expression] old age has a kind of harrowing beauty. But elderly - ugh!

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.