...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.

I can write anywhere. I actually wrote more than I ever did when I had small children. My children were never a hindrance.

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 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.

That the world I was in could be soft, lovely, and nourishing was more than I could bear, and so I stood there and wept, for I didn't want to love one more thing in my life, didn't want one more thing that could make my heart break into a million little pieces at my feet.

I wrote home to say how lovely everything was, and I used flourishing words and phrases, as if I were living life in a greeting card - the kind that has a satin ribbon on it, and quilted hearts and roses, and is expected to be so precious to the person receiving it that the manufacturer has placed a leaf of plastic on the front to protect it.

I like cooking, but I think someone else ought to do the dishes.