Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more ­effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.

Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.

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

Every island to a child is a treasure island.

The world of the terminally ill is the world of neither the living nor the dead. I have watched others since I watched my father, and always with a sense of their strangeness. They sit and speak, and are spoken to, and listen, and even smile, but in spirit they have already moved away from us and there is no way we can enter their shadowy no-man’s-land.

The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.

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