If it really was Queen Elizabeth who demanded to see Falstaff in a comedy, then she showed herself a very perceptive critic. But even in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff has not and could not have found his true home because Shakespeare was only a poet. For that he was to wait nearly two hundred years till Verdi wrote his last opera. Falstaff is not the only case of a character whose true home is the world of music; others are Tristan, Isolde and Don Giovanni.

May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?

A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.

'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'

Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.

Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.

Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say