A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city.

I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.

you'd like the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That must be the most futile oath anyone ever swears.

we can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us.

Every island to a child is a treasure island.

If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome?

There is no point in regretting any part of the past. The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.