When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless.

The air and the earth interpenetrated in the warm gusts of spring; the soil was full of sunlight, and the sunlight full of red dust. The air one breathed was saturated with earthy smells, and the grass under foot had a reflection of the blue sky in it.

Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.

People can be lovers and enemies at the same time, you know.

Money is a protection, a cloak; it can buy one quiet, and some sort of dignity.

The air was cool enough to make the warm sun pleasant on one's back and shoulders, and so clear that the eye could follow a hawk up and up, into the blazing blue depths of the sky.

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.