when married people begin to talk about their rights, it means something has gone pretty far wrong between them.

Things you can't understand are always the hardest to bear. To know why is the first step to consolation.

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.

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

The most trying moments in human experience were those in which there was nothing to be done except to wait.

There is a country proverb which says, 'If you don't trouble trouble - trouble won't trouble you.

... the things that happened in your body were never as bad as the things that happened in your mind.