We are perverse creatures and never satisfied.

The sorrows of children are profound and unsuspected.

Understanding, above all, is a gift we should never offer uninvited.

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

Perhaps the way with any obsession is to ignore it simply. Not to fight it, since it draws strength from any contact with us, whether hostile or friendly.

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.

One of the many possible divisions of human beings is into those who make and those who use.