confession ran in the family.

The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.

I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.

Nothing is more beautifully and acceptably self-assertive than good singing.

Freedom is not choosing; that is merely the move that we make when all is already lost. Freedom is knowing and understanding and respecting things quite other than ourselves.

The bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved.

Every human soul has seen, perhaps before their birth, pure forms such as justice, temperance, beauty and all the great moral qualities which we hold in honour. We are moved towards what is good by the faint memory of these forms, simple and calm and blessed, which we saw once in a pure, clear light, being pure ourselves.