It's hard to visualize the toys you had fifty years ago - all save bear. He's as clear as if he were sitting on the desk in front of you...of course...he probably is.

Sisters never quite forgive each other for what happened when they were five.

A younger sister is someone to use as a guinea-pig in trying sledges and experimental go-carts. Someone to send on messages to Mum. But someone who needs you - who comes to you with bumped heads, grazed knees, tales of persecution. Someone who trusts you to defend her. Someone who thinks you know the answers to almost everything.

Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, story-tellers, singers of songs.

If your sister is in a tearing hurry to go out and cannot catch your eye, she's wearing your best sweater.

Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience.

In loneliness, in sickness, in confusion-the mere knowledge of friendship makes it possible to endure, even if the friend is powerless to help. It is enough that they exist. Friendship is not diminished by distance or time, by imprisonment or war, by suffering or silence. It is in these things that it roots most deeply. It is from these things that it flowers.