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.

leisure is an attitude of mind, not simply remission of work.

The sorrows of children are profound and unsuspected.

Most of us are experts at solving other people's problems, but we generally solve them in terms of our own and the advice we give is seldom for other people but for ourselves.

We are perverse creatures and never satisfied.

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

the urgent crowds out the essential.