Is there any delight as great as the child's discovering ability?

America can be a very hysterical country intellectually and very puritanical, too. You probably have fun in private, but to the rest of the world you seem to hate fun - to be big on agendas and short on spontaneity. The image you present is one of appalling conformity. The thought police is what you are ruled by.

What matters most is that we learn from living.

We've got to believe in our beautiful impossible blueprints.

I hated the 1960's feminists," she says. "They were dogmatists, you see. In comes ideology, and out goes common sense. This is my experience of life.

Time is the River on which the leaves of our thoughts are carried into oblivion.

What a luxury a cat is, the moments of shocking and startling pleasure in a day, the feel of the beast, the soft sleekness under your palm, the warmth when you wake on a cold night, the grace and charm even in a quite ordinary workaday puss. Cat walks across your room, and in that lonely stalk you see leopard or even panther, or it turns its head to acknowledge you and the yellow blaze of those eyes tells you what an exotic visitor you have here, in this household friend, the cat who purrs as you stroke, or rub his chin, or scratch his head.