A friend is the only person you will let into the house when you are Turning Out Drawers.

The courage of very ordinary people is all that stands between us and the dark.

For the sake of the sons - and even for the son's future wives - a woman must keep a part of her mind and heart entirely for herself. Every family is better off with a wife and mother who can astonish and occasionally dewilder.

Always smile back at little children. To ignore them is to destroy their belief that the world is good.

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.

A bag of apples, a pot of homemade jam, a scribbled note, a bunch of golden flowers, a coloured pebble, a box of seedlings, an empty scent bottle for the children. . . . Who needs diamonds and van-delivered bouquets?

However time or circumstances may come between mother and her child, their lives are interwoven forever.