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 wanted to know more about the young ... strange that though they laughed so loud, they so seldom smiled. Perhaps laughter was involuntary whereas smiling was part of an attitude to life.

He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. "Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die--and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.

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.

Death is too much to ask of the living.

I wanted so terribly to be good to him.

I have really sinned. I am going to pause now, and sit here on the mound repenting in deepest shame.