A child's attitude toward everything is an artist's attitude.

One may have staunch friends in one's own family, but one seldom has admirers.

I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.

Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches.

Yet the summer which was to change everything was coming nearer every day. When boys and girls are growing up, life can't stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whether they will or no. That is what their elders are always forgetting.

I first met Myra Henshawe when I was fifteen, but I had known her about ever since I could remember anything at all.

What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.