My writing is progressing slowly, but at least it's moving forward. I'm sure that's the case. The only problem is that I'm never absolutely certain that what I've written is any good.

If it is true that cowardice is the most grave vice, then the dog, at least, is not guilty of it.

Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn't so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other.

No one's fate is of any interest to you except your own.

In the first few seconds an aching sadness wrenched his heart, but it soon gave way to a feeling of sweet disquiet, the excitement of gypsy wanderlust

Kindness. The only possible method when dealing with a living creature. You'll get nowhere with an animal if you use terror, no matter what its level of development may be. That I have maintained, do maintain and always will maintain. People who think you can use terror are quite wrong. No, no, terror is useless, whatever its colour – white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyses the nervous system.

Nobody should be whipped. Remember that, once and for all. Neither man nor animal can be influenced by anything but suggestion.