Mary Stuart wrote, 'My end is in my beginning.' It is easier to agree with her than to decide what is the beginning, and what is the end.

Emotion which you do not share can become intolerable.

My dear father always said that when everybody had a telephone nobody would have any manners, because there wouldn't be time for them. And of course he was perfectly right.

it isn't good tactics to ask for something that you know will be refused.

happy people have got something to give to the world.

Children want one thing at a time, and want that one thing passionately.

There is and always has been for me a peculiar need to write. This is very different from wanting to be a writer. To be a writer always seemed something so far removed from my talents and abilities and imaginings that it didn't afflict me at all as a notion when I was young. But I was always conscious that I wanted to write.