When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don't do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.

Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.

The most prosaic of us betray a belief in the inward life every time we talk about 'my body' rather than 'I.

I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you.

A curse on this game. How can you stick at a game when the rules keep on changing? I shall call myself Alice and play croquet with the flamingos. In Wonderland everyone cheats and love is Wonderland, isn't it?

We have a generation of kids who may never see a bookshelf or never see books in houses. What are they going to think about books? How will books become meaningful in their lives except as yet another form of digitalized content? A book is not just digitalized content.

To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.