He was just drifting off to sleep when it occurred to him that perhaps the dog was not so ordinary after all. Perhaps he was someone the ogre had changed, and Ivo was going to...

She was so intelligent that she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence…they don’t talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good…

It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as...

Stupid women were lured into it and assured they would become young and beautiful if they let themselves be pummeled and pounded and smeared with sticky creams, and have their faces lifted and their stomachs...

When you’re sad, my Little Star, go out of doors. It’s always better underneath the open sky.

Ms. Wrack’s mother, Mrs. Wrack, had been a mermaid: a proper one who lived on a rock and combed her hair and sang. But sailors had never been lured to their doom by her, partly...

After all, Betty was ill and she was her sister, and she wouldn’t be able to shave her legs for weeks because of the plaster.

You cannot stop the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can stop them nesting in your hair.

One must not judge other cultures by the standars of one’s one,’ said Aunt Hilda

Please, God,’ Ruth would pray, ‘don’t let me be competitive. Let me realize what a privilege it is to study. Let me remember that knowledge must be pursued for its own sake and please, please...

Slowly, Anna put up a hand to his muzzle and began to scratch that spot behind the ear where large dogs keep their souls.

To show too much joy in a place such as this would be unseemly but, as he padded toward her, his tail was extended in a manner which would make wagging possible should all go...