Books everywhere. On the shelves and on the small space above the rows of books and all along the floor and under chairs, books that I have read, books that I have not read.

What matters is the imaginative truth.

There are times when the thing we are seeing changes before our very eyes, and if it is a landscape we praise nature, and if it is celestial we invoke God, but if it is a loved one who defects, we excuse ourselves and say we have to be somewhere and are already late for our next appointment. We do not stay to put pennies over the half-dead eyes.

She said the reason that love is so painful is that it always amounts to two people wanting more than two people can give.

Writers, however mature and wise and eminent, are children at heart.

She was an auxiliary nurse but training to be a true nurse because that was her calling, to serve mankind. She was a Martha. There were Marys and Marthas, but Marys got all the limelight because of being Christ's handmaiden, but Marthas were far more sincere.

Wherever there were horses or ponies the mushrooms always sprang up.