My father, though, could run very much faster. It was impossible to compete with him on the grass. But it was astonishing how slow old people were. Some of them could not run up a hill and called it trying to climb stairs.

I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying open-air life, with plants and animals.

On the whole, the world was friendly. It chiefly depended on whether one were good or not.

When I was a little boy I did not, of course, trouble much about my appearance.

That a literature in our time is living is shown in that way that it debates problems.

The stream of time sweeps away errors, and leaves the truth for the inheritance of humanity.

Birth was something that came quite unexpectedly, and afterwards there was one child more in the house.