Absolute nakedness was intrusive, confusing to the senses. Paradoxically, it both revealed and diminished identity.

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

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

Every island to a child is a treasure island.

Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin.

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.

The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.