Once you have felt the Indian dust, you will never be free of it.

A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory...dictiona ries, thesaurus, poems, favorite paragraphs, to find the right word, is like someone owning a gold mine who has never mined it.

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.

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 must remember garden catalogues are as big liars as house-agents.

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

Every time a child, any child, is born, it is new - and different; that is the wonder.