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.

the urgent crowds out the essential.

We are perverse creatures and never satisfied.

We envy people we love for being always in their own loved company.

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

The sorrows of children are profound and unsuspected.

A garden is one of the few expressions of man's nature that is altogether benign.