Traveling is all very well if you can get home at night. I would be willing to go around the world if I came back in time to light the candles and set the table for supper.

Christmas is a kindling of new fires.

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.

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.

The creative instincts, the love force must be nourished with every beat of our hearts until they overbalance the destructive instincts.

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.

Most cats feel that bird-catching is their duty; the instinct goes back to prehistoric times. Amber keeps in practice by chasing moths.