I am old enough to know that time passing is just a trick, a convenience. Everything is always there, still unfolding, still happening. The past, the present, and the future, in the noggin eternally, like brushes, combs and ribbons in a handbag.

For I did not want him to see, or to question me, for here contains already secrets, and my secrets are my fortune and my sanity.

The world is not full of betrayers, it is full of people with decent motives and a full desire to do right by those who know them and love them. This is a little-known truth, but I think it is a truth nonetheless. Empirically, from all the years of my work, I would attest to that. I know it is a miraculous conclusion, but there it is. We like to make strangers of everyone. We are not wolves, but lambs astonished in the margins of the fields by sunlight and summer.

After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.

That is because at the close of the day the ship we sail in is the soul, not the body.

It is always worth itemising happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers for happiness while you can.

There is such solace in the mere sight of water. It clothes us delicately in its blowing salt and scent, gossamer items that medicate the poor soul