It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed.

Any visitor to an historic country town or city quickly becomes aware in his or her peregrinations that the most attractive houses in the centre are invariably the offices of lawyers.

however long we have to live, there are never enough springs.

Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.

All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.

Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.

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.