If I had my life over again[, ] I’d have thought more about words. And thought about them earlier.

And now, finished with that puzzling mixture of insane intimacy and isolation which is notoriety, Velvet was able to get on quietly to her next adventures.

In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous...

A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again.

When a man goes through six years training to be a doctor he will never be the same. He knows too much.

If a dog doesn’t put you first where are you both? In what relation? A dog needs God. It lives by your glances, your wishes. It even shares your humor. This happens about the fifth...

Judges don’t age; time decorates them.

The pleasure of one’s effect on other people still exists in age – what’s called making a hit. But the hit is much rarer and made of different stuff.

As for death one gets used to it, even if it’s only other people’s death you get used to.

The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name.

Suddenly, as they walked with their buckets, it was not the child in each face that she sought, but the Wonder that had raised itself on to its two feet, that had learnt to walk,...

The children seemed to cast their Precursors like shadows about the house, sometimes tangibly, in the sound of a voice, sometimes by suggestion, because it was striking the hour for their return from a walk,...