“One of the secrets of a happy life is continous small treats.”

Reading and writing and the preservation of language and its forms and the kind of eloquence and the kind of beauty which the language is capable of is terribly important to the human beings because this is connected to thought.

Every persisting marriage is based on fear’, said Peregrine. ‘Fear is fundamental, you dig down in human nature and what’s at the bottom? Mean spiteful cruel self-regarding fear, whether it makes you to put the foot in it or whether it makes you to cower.

Only take someone’s hand in a certain way, even look into their eyes in a certain way, and the world is changed forever.

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.

Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.

This sort of quiet gazing, which was like a feeding of the heart.

I felt a deep grief that crouched and stayed still as if it was afraid to move.

What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.

Love doesn’t think like that. All right, it’s blind as a bat- Bats have radar. Yours doesnt seem to be working.

What an extraordinary satisfaction there is in cleaning things! (Does the satisfaction depend on ownership? I suspect so.

The talk of lovers who have just declared their love is one of life’s most sweet delights. Each vies with the other in humility, in amazement at being so valued. The past is searched for the first signs and each one is in haste to declare all that he is so that no part of his being escapes the hallowing touch.

One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better.

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality says Iris Murdoch. But given the state of the world, is it wise?

Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.

One should go easy on smashing other people’s lies. Better to concentrate on one’s own.

There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race.

Dogs will eat till they die. Cats will leave food in the dish, incomprehensible to a dog.

Joy is more divine than sorrow, for joy is bread and sorrow is medicine.

We eat a lot of lean meat and fresh vegetables.

Edward helped, making faces every so often at the raw ingredients-human food was mildly repulsive to him.

I love flying so much. I even airplane food. No one bothers you and your phone never goes off and you can’t have emails go through. It’s undisturbed.

What will be the death of me are buillabaisses, food spiced with pimiento, shellfish, and a load of exquisite rubbish which I eat in disproportionate quantities.

Hatred like love feeds on the merest trifles. Everything adds to it. Just as the being we love can do no wrong, so the one we hate can do no right.

If I got a girlfriend, I’d feed her playfully all of the time.