A garden isn't meant to be useful. It's for joy.

Every piece of writing starts from what I call a grit a sight or sound, a sentence or happening that does not pass away but quite inexplicably lodges in the mind.

Of course one never knows in draft if it's going to turn out, even with my age and experience.

People don't know the consolations of being unsuccessful ... If I had been successful I should have had no peace or time.

The best would be to have friends who came and went away; but if I had to choose between their never coming or never going away, I think I would choose that they do not come.

You can be a nuisance to your family. You mustn't be a nuisance to your friends.

To me and my kind life itself is a story and we have to tell it in stories - that is the way it falls.