Enigmatic - the quality of keeping silent and making people wonder if one is stupid rather than opening one's mouth and removing all doubt.

Principles are sometimes an unaffordable luxury.

Europeans condemned Chinese foot binding, but any society that had invented the corset had a lot to answer for.

You don't have to be crazy to be a writer, but it certainly does help

we all grow up thinking our parents found us under cabbage leaves and that sex didn't exist before our personal coming-of-age.

A witty vicar once said that a good marriage is like a pair of scissors with the couple inseparable joined, often moving in opposite directions, yet always destroying anyone who comes between them. The trick is for the blades to learn to work smoothly together, so as not to cut each other.

What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever.