Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time.

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.

In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in middle age that we are shadowed by the awareness of the transitoriness of life.

I love the idea of bringing order out of disorder which is what the mystery is about. I like the way in which it affirms the sanity of human life and exorcises irrational guilts.

Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one.

We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.