“The long days seduce all thought away, and we lie like the lizards in the sun, postponing our lives indefinitely.”

“I am only a literary lizard basking the day away beneath the great sun of Beauty. That's all.”

“Fortune's fool! How we humans lie upon beauty like lizards upon a sun-baked rock.”

“I stood there in the kitchen, watching her staring across the meadow still searching for her nemesis and I thought, suddenly, that this is all our lives - this is the one fact that applies to us all, that makes us what we are, our common mortality, our common humanity. One day someone is going to come and take us away: you don't need to have been a spy, I thought, to feel like this.”

“I can't believe that we would lie in our gravesWondering if we hadspent our living days wellI can't believe that we would lie in our gravesDreaming of things that we might have been”

“We know not whether laws be right Or whether laws be wrong All we know who lie in gaol Is that the walls are strong And each day is like a year A year whose days are long.”