when people go away, or when we leave the places we love, or something we treasure goes out of our life - I have always noticed that before it happens - this leaving, this parting - when we think about it beforehand we are overwhelmed with sadness at the loss to come. ... the most unbearable sense of loss, the worst homesickness of all, so I have found, is this loss and sickness we feel beforehand, before we ever leave home.

If you would be happy all your life, plant a garden.

We are perverse creatures and never satisfied.

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.

happiness makes us older, less romantic, less in need of dreams. Discontent, not happiness, is the food of youth and poetry.

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

Every search has its own momentum. It is why a search makes such an excellent plot for a film or story.