Capable people do not understand incapacity; clever people do not understand stupidity.

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.

You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.

There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.

I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common.

Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.