“Long experience has taught me that people who do not like geraniums have something morally unsound about them. Sooner or later you will find them out; you will discover that they drink, or steal books, or speak sharply to cats. Never trust a man or a woman who is not passionately devoted to geraniums.”

“Well, I love geraniums, and anybody who does not love geraniums must obviously be a depraved and loathsome person.”

“For a garden is a mistress, and gardening is a blend of all the arts, and if it is not the death of me, sooner or later, I shall be much surprised.”

“Let us be honest: most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked around the house with a saintly expression.”

“Do you ever find yourself bursting into a sort of lunatic laughter at the sheer prettiness of things?”

“Often, when I have been feeling lonely, when a book as been thrust aside in boredom [...] I have lain back and stared at the shadows on the ceiling, wondering what life is all about [...] and then, suddenly, there is the echo of the swinging door, and across the carpet, walking with the utmost delicacy and precision, stalks Four or Five or Oscar. He sits down on the floor beside me, regarding my long legs, my old jumper, and my floppy arms, with a purely practical interest. Which part of this large male body will form the most appropriate lap? Usually he settles for the chest. Whereupon he springs up and there is a feeling of cold fur [...] and the tip of an icy nose, thrust against my wrist and a positive tattoo of purrs. And I no longer wonder what life is all about.”

“Marriage is a book in which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.”