As far back as I remember, long before I could write, I had played at making stories. But not until I was seven or more, did I begin to pray every night, "O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!"

What was time itself but the bloom, the sheath enfolding experience? Within time, and with time alone, there was life - the gleam, the quiver, the heartbeat, the immeasurable joy and anguish of being.

I have written chiefly because, though I have often dreaded the necessity, I have found it more painful, in the end, not to write.

. . . every tree near our house had a name of its own and a special identity. This was the beginning of my love for natural things, for earth and sky, for roads and fields and woods, for trees and grass and flowers; a love which has been second only to my sense of enduring kinship with birds and animals, and all inarticulate creatures.

The hardest thing for me is the sense of impermanence. All passes; nothing returns.

Given two tempers and the time, the ordinary marriage produces anarchy.

audacity is of all qualities the most youthful.