The sorrows we imagine are more profound and inconsolable than real life leaves us time for.

the large black slugs ... come out at dusk. Enormous slugs. As big as crocodiles. So huge we need a gun to shoot them. And by the end of the summer, if they go on growing, we shall have to go out in pairs together for protection.

It is always one of the tragedies of any relationship, even between people sensitive to each other's moods, that the moments of emotion so rarely coincide.

There is a stage with people we love when we are no longer separate from them, but so close in sympathy that we live through them as directly as through ourselves. ... we push back our hair because theirs is in their eyes.

We love those we are happy with. We do. For how else can we know we love them, or how else define loving?

children are not undeveloped versions of adult people: they are a different race of beings: they are children.

Enthusiasm is a plant which grows variously in the varying soils of different natures.