“And afterwards, if you had asked any of the survivors how they had managed it, they would not have been able to tell you. It was as if those days in the forest, the escape to the city, had passed in a trance. The mind creates an alternative state.”

“I don't care much for diamonds,' Nicola had told him.'Have you ever been offered any?' he had asked, and he had been making fun of her, his face mocking.'Not that I can remember,' Nicola had admitted calmly.'And how would an offer be received?' he had asked, as though he knew the answer.'With a kick in the teeth,' Nicola had said, meeting his eye.”

“Because of course she had known she must go. She always did the thing because in obedience lay the integrity that God asked of her. If anyone had asked her what she meant by integrity she would not have been able to tell them but she had seen it once like a picture in her mind, a root going down into the earth and drinking deeply there. No one was really alive without that root.”

“Have you ever had one of those days when something just seems to be trying to tell you somebody?”

“The days went by for him, all different and all the same. The boy was happy, and yet he didn't know that he was happy, exactly: he couldn't remember having been unhappy. If one day as he played at the edge of the forest some talking bird had flown down and asked him: "Do you like your life" he would not have known what to say, but would have asked the bird: "Can you not like it?”

“had my books been any worse I would not have been invited to Hollywood and if they had been any better I would not have come.”