I love both the way a dog looks up to me and a cat condescends to me.

When Father smiled, it was like the sun coming out, and spring and summer in your heart.

Americans tend to believe they can do anything with or without any training or experience.

There must be hundreds of unsung heroes and heroines who first tasted strange things growing - and think of the man who first ate a lobster. This staggers the imagination. I salute him every time I take my nutcracker in hand and move the melted-butter pipkin closer.

Old houses, I thought, do not belong to people ever, not really, people belong to them.

Perhaps, after all, our best thoughts come when we are alone. It is good to listen, not to voices but to the wind blowing, to the brook running cool over polished stones, to bees drowsy with the weight of pollen. If we attend to the music of the earth, we reach serenity. And then, in some unexplained way, we share it with others.

Nothing makes a house cozier than cats.