“What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.”

Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.

I don’t talk very well. With writing, you’ve time to get it right. Also I’ve found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn’t write no one would want me to talk anyway.

However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.

We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.

[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.

One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.’ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.

Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.

A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It’s not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.

But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.

Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.

I dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.

Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this.

Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.

The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.

Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.

There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world.

There are still many great surviving talents: Stevie Winwood. Another great talent is Stevie Wonder.

It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.

It is one thing to touch a flame and know it is hot, but quite another to jump into that flame and be consumed by it.

That vie with one another (“qui rivalisent à l’envi,” Fr.), by the increase of their armies and the improvement of their engines of murder (“engins meurtriers”, Fr).

We need to find another way or another shape or an allegory or something that tells us more.

I don’t expect that because I was successful in one field that I will then get a ride of passage into another.

I don’t watch my own films. There is little time; I’d rather see another film.

You can buy a good pasta but when you cook it yourself it has another feeling.