“There is nothing more guaranteed to reduce a man to the essentials than to live beneath the sky.”

Emotions weren’t like washing. There was no call to peg them out for all the world to view.

It seems to me that a mutually beneficial relationship between a man and woman requires the man to be dominant. A sensible woman will allow the man to think he is the most important partner.

Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood.

What we remember is probably fiction anyway.

Women are programmed to love completely, and men are programmed to spread it around. We are fools to think it’s any different.

Being constantly with children was like wearing a pair of shoes that were expensive and too small. She couldn’t bear to throw them out, but they gave her blisters.

nothing is so sad as the injustices of old age.

There are many things in this life capable of throwing people off course – the death of someone close, the loss of income or health, the realisation that cherished hopes cannot always be fulfilled

The sun burnt on, drugging everything with warmth.

I’ve never been drawn to the feminist movement. I was brought up to believe that men had little to do with the home or children – except to bring in the money.

When passion is mutual, there is always the danger of the fire burning to ashes.

The older one becomes the quicker the present fades into sepia and the past looms up in glorious technicolour

Moonlight lined the windowsills like a fall of snow.

The family is the essential presence, the thing that never leaves you, even if you find you have to leave it.

We face an essential need to reach a definition of terrorism that will enjoy wide international agreement, thus enabling international operations against terrorist organizations.

History is various and sinuous and no essential part of the human spirit is ever wholly absent from it.

The essential thing is to run period! And to do it for a long time and consistently and then everything will take care of itself.

For those that endure until spring, existence is reduced to its elegant essentials.

To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.

I assure this committee that, if I am confirmed, I will be strictly independent of all political influences… essential to that institution’s ability to function effectively and achieve its mandated objectives.

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one’s own prose.