I know that the fantastic amount of profit that people want to make on anything is damaging. And that none of us seem able to resist it.

It's too easy to say this or that is "race," and that has been a vehicle for an incredible amount of wrong in the world.

An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you.

I've never let the criticism deter me.

In a way, a garden is the most useless of creations, the most slippery of creations: it is not like a painting or a piece of sculpture-it won't accrue value as time goes on. Time is its enemy' time passing is merely the countdown for the parting between garden and gardener.

I like melancholy. I like to pretend that I'm alone in the world and I'm just sort of abandoned.

I'm very aware that we make these decisions toward love or hate every day. I certainly don't have the stamina to live through each day making only the noblest decisions.