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.

We are often more merciful to our animals than we are to each other.

A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.

The great tragedy of Alzheimer's disease, and the reason why we dread it, is that it leaves us with no defence, not even against those who love us.

Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.

A letter is paradoxically the most revealing and the most deceptive of confessional revelations. We all have our inconsistencies, prejudices, irrationalities which, although strongly felt at the time, may be transitory. A letter captures the mood of the moment. The transitory becomes immutably fixed, part of the evidence for the prosecution or the defence.

The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.