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.

The place for truth is not in the facts of a novel; it is in the feelings.

Have you ever thought, when something dreadful happens, 'a moment ago things were not like this; let it be then, not now, anything but now'? And you try and try to remake then, but you know you can't. So you try to hold the moment quite still and not let it move on and show itself.

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

It is not true that women cannot keep secrets. Where they love, they can be trusted to death and beyond, against all sense and reason. It is their weakness, and their great strength.

To plant a garden is the chief of the arts of peace.

It does not do to neglect the gods of a place, whoever they may be. In the end, they are all one.