“When I heard that she was dead, I really suffered very little.”

“I have always been sure that if England were ever occupied its people would find the organization of underground cells an almost effortless means of self-expression.”

“I have noticed that what cats most appreciate in a human being is not the ability to produce food - which they take for granted - but his or her entertainment value. Asmodeus took to his toy enthusiastically. In another week he permitted me to stroke him, producing a raucous purr, but, in order to save his face, pretending to be asleep.”

“Love's only business is to preserve the race, not the individual.”

“I run into trees all the time when I go sledding”

“Not as we are but as we must appear, contractual ghosts of pity; not as we desire life, but as they would have us live, set apart in timeless colloquy. So it is required; so we bear witness, despite ourselves, to what is beyond us,each distant sphere of harmony forever poised, unanswerable. It is without consequence when we vaunt and suffer, or if it is not, all echoes are the same in such eternity. Then tell me, love,how that should comfort us-or anyone dragged half-unnerved out of this worldly place crying to the end ”I have not finished.”From 'Funeral Music”

“The life so brief, the art so long in the learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly - by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation, that when I think upon it I scarce know whether I wake or sleep.”