I like owls. I admire their intransigent spirit. I have respected them deeply ever since I met a baby owl in a wood, when it fell over dead, apparently from sheer temper, because I dared to approach it. It defied me first, and then died. I have never forgotten the horror and shame I experienced when that soft fluffy thing (towards which I had nothing but the most humanitarian motives) fell dead from rage at my feet.

It is a sad moment when the first phlox appears. It is the amber light indicating the end of the great burst of early summer and suggesting that we must now start looking forward to autumn. Not that I have any objection to autumn as a season, full of its own beauty; but I just cannot bear to see another summer go, and I recoil from what the first hint of autumn means.

Things were not tragic for us then, because although we cared passionately we didn't care deeply.

Summer makes a silence after spring.

Nothing shows up the difference between the things said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.

It isn't that I don't like sweet disorder, but it has to be judiciously arranged.

It is dreadful how I miss you, and everything that everybody says seems flat and stupid.