Religion's crucial role in the lives of many people. . . is rejected out of hand by the political community, especially the press.
One need never be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.
Most people, looking back at their childhood, see it as a misty country half-forgotten or only to be remembered through an evocative sound or scent, but some episodes of those short years remain clear and brightly coloured like a landscape seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
. . . some people might think our lives dull and uneventful, but it does not seem so to us. . . . it is not travel and adventure that make a full life. There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need ever be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.
It is curious, isn't it, that things you know well never look dirty and dilapidated-other people's old furniture looks shabby and moth-eaten. “I would never have that horrible old couch in my room,” you say. But your own old couch is every bit as bad and you are not disgusted with its appearance; it is your friend, you see, and you remember it when it was new and smart. Friends that you have known for a long time and love very dearly never seem to grow old.
In a new friend we start life anew, for we create a new edition of ourselves and so become,for the time being, a new creature.
It was curious that when we had been able to buy new clothes when we wanted we had never really appreciated them nor enjoyed them. You have to be in the position of needing things very badly indeed before you can appreciate possessing them.
Idea that all the beats are wildly liberal and progressive is ridiculous. You have people thinking for themselves and having certain affinities because of their upbringing and who their family are, their own people who were close to them who fought in these wars and so on. It's complicated. But they had that ability to continue the conversation.
I like to be nice to people, but sometimes people aren't nice to me.
I do not want to be folded for where I am folded, there I am a lie.
Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity.