the difficult art I was attempting had, indeed a powerful fascination, before which the past faded, the future receded, and the whole of experience narrowed down to this stretch of glancing, glimmering water, and the fly I was trying to cast across it.

I had always been content to know that there was more in the living world than we could hope to understand.

I knew that I had turned my world back to cinders, sunk my lovely ship with my own stupid, wicked hands.

Take love easy, as the leaves grow on the trees.

I reached for sleep and drew it round me like a blanket muffling pain and thought together in the merciful dark

The sense of smell is the hair-trigger of memory.

The essence of wisdom is to know when to be doing, and when it's useless even to try