It seemed to her sometimes that the most important thing about marriage was not a home or children or a remedy against sin, but simply there being always an eye to catch.

Nature has decreed that for what men suffer by having to shave, be killed in battle, and eat the legs of chickens, women make amends by housekeeping, childbirth, and writing all the letters for both of them.

The worst of gardening is that it's so full of metaphors one hardly knows where to begin.

Words were the only net to catch a mood, the only sure weapon against oblivion.

I can't abide cats myself, but of course we have to have one in the kitchen to deal with the mice. I insisted on getting a black one, because anything else shows the dirt so in London.

how much of the fun of parenthood lay in watching the children remake, with delighted wonder, one's own discoveries.

One is what one remembers: no more, no less.