When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed.

Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.

Children are not less intelligent than adults; what they are is less informed.

My mother married again after my father's death - another Royal Air Force officer, and a very different kind of man. We went to Australia when I was eight or nine. We lived there for a couple of years, and then came back and lived in North Wales for the whole of my teenage years... I learned how to write poems quite a lot. I just had a good time reading and reading and reading. So that's where I did most of my growing up.

And think what worrying does: has anyone ever added a single hour to the length of his life by worrying about it?

Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.

One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you.