If naturalists go to heaven (about which there is considerable ecclesiastical doubt), I hope that I will be furnished with a troop of kakapo to amuse me in the evening instead of television.

My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.

By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors.

I can't be expected to produce deathless prose in an atmosphere of gloom and eucalyptus.

Among the myrtles the mantids moved, lightly, carefully, swaying slightly, the quintessence of evil. They were lank and green, with chinless faces and monstrous globular eyes, frosty gold, with an expression of intense, predatory madness in them. The crooked arms, with their fringes of sharp teeth, would be raised in mock supplication to the insect world, so humble, so fervent, trembling slightly when a butterfly flew too close.

They were maps that lived, maps that one could study, frown over, and add to; maps, in short, that really meant something.

‎'All we need is a book,' roared Leslie; 'don't panic, hit 'em with a book.