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.

A good recipe for a human reducing breakfast is a lot of good things to eat, and three spaniels and two cats to eat with.

A house with no fireplace is a house without a heart.

If I had Aladdin's lamp and the usual three wishes, the first would always be, 'Give me the first day of June.

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.

Life is a process of discovery, of new perceptions.