There's a war on. We don't know how anything's going to end. We just have to grasp each fleeting moment of joy as it whizzes by.

It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Arrival often brings nothing but a sense of desolation and disappointment.

She believed, of course ... because without something to believe in, life would be intolerable.

Life is so extraordinary. Wonderful surprises are just around the most unexpected corners.

They will come, not to paint the bay and the sea and the boots and the moors, but the warmth of the sun and the colour of the wind. A whole new concept. Such stimulation. Such vitality.

I wasn't good enough. I had a little talent but not enough. There is nothing more discouraging than having just a little talent.

She thought of the last couple of years: the boredom, the narrowness of existence, the dearth of anything to look forward to. Yet now, in a single instant, the curtains had been whipped aside, and the windows been thrown open onto a brillant view that had been there, waiting for her, all the time. A view, moreover, laden with the most marvellous possibilities and opportunities.