Guests can be, and often are, delightful, but they should never be allowed to get the upper hand.

But it is impossible, I find, to tidy books without ending by sitting on the floor in the middle of a great untidiness and reading.

I have been much afflicted again lately by visitors . . . and they gave me to understand that if they had had the arranging of the garden it would have been finished long ago - whereas I don't believe a garden is ever finished. They have all gone now, thank heaven.

I want to be as idle as I can, so that my soul may have time to grow.

When I got to the library I came to a standstill, - ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, writing, dreaming, doing nothing.

For I'm afraid of loneliness; shiveringly, terribly afraid. I don't mean the ordinary physical loneliness, for here I am, deliberately travelled away from London to get to it, to its spaciousness and healing. I mean that awful loneliness of spirit that is the ultimate tragedy of life. When you've got to that, really reached it, without hope, without escape, you die. You just can't bear it, and you die.

... Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer.