Human beings are drawn to cats because they are all we are not — self-contained, elegant in everything they do, relaxed, assured, glad of company, yet still possessing secret lives.

Music speaks of Platonic truth - the ideal river rather than the polluted reality, love as we dream it rather than we experience it, grief noble and uplifting rather than our distracted weeping. It is necessary to our survival and our sanity.

Dads don't need to be tall and broad-shouldered and clever. Love makes them so.

An older sister is a friend and defender - a listener, conspirator, a counsellor and a sharer of delights. And sorrows too.

A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely.

Medicines may be necessary. Flowers lift the heart. But your smile is the best restorative of all.

For every person who has ever lived there has come, at last, a spring he will never see. Glory then in the springs that are yours.