“But this upland pass was the right place for remembering how, when I was young, I learned to feel for the harshness underneath every soft appearance.”

“...when I was young, I learned to feel for the harshness under every soft appearance.”

“...Though it seemed trivial, now, to describe a place as if what is was, was what I could see of it.”

“When I stay with the couple who are my closest friends, I hear them laughing and talking in bed, and sometimes in the middle of the night one of them goes down and makes tea, and when the clock goes off in the morning, they start again, talking to each other.”

“I tried not to think about it. But every so often it would burst out of me - why did he do something so unkind? What had I done to deserve it? I did believe, from my experience of life and of looking at the world, that men hated women. But there were all kinds of exceptions, and I'd have bet everything that this man didn't hate me, this woman.”

“Let me just say that I am not often lonely in country places. In cities I am, like the writers of the letters. Nature doesn't break your heart: other people do. Yet, we cannot live apart from each other in bowers feeding on nectar. We're in this together, this getting through our lives, as the fact that we are word-users shows.”

“Permanence, I once copied down from a magazine, is what we all want when we can love and can be loved; change is what we want when we cannot.”