I learned very early on not to speak to my folk from on high, but to get down with them, beside them, showing them how to act rather than telling them. And I suggested that they should do the same with one another: that they didn't need a book of rules to tell them what to do and what not to do, but experience and action.

Oh, propriety," says Mrs Benjamin. "We're always so concerned with propriety. Even in total madness, we still stick to our hierarchies and chains of command.

No one does. No one really knows how to be happy. You just get close, sometimes. That’s all I want – just to be close.

The older you get, the more voices you get in the back of your head.

Forgettingis a beautiful thing. When you forget, you remake yourself. For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must forget it was a caterpillar at all. Then it will be as if the caterpillar never was & there was only ever a butterfly.

I learned very early on not to speak to my folk from on high, but to get down with them, beside them, showing them how to act rather than telling them. And I suggested that they should do the same with one another: that they didn't need a book of rules to tell them what to do and what not to do, but experience and action.

The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope.