The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees - to learn something by being nothing

I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us.

A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry.

When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included.

Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.

I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.

But the owls themselves are not hard to find, silent and on the wing, with their ear tufts flat against their heads as they fly and their huge wings alternately gliding and flapping as they maneuver through the trees. Athena's owl of wisdom and Merlin's companion, Archimedes, were screech owls surely, not this bird with the glassy gaze, restless on the bough, nothing but blood on its mind.