“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.”

I hold an old-fashioned notion that a happy marriage is the crown of a woman’s life.

Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say, as I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells and rough land seeing every stone and flower and patch of bog and cotton pass where my old legs will never take me again.

I think prejudice and tradition count for three-quarters in matters of religion.

What we call the highest and the lowest in nature are both equally perfect. A willow bush is as beautiful as the human form divine.

One day puss did not take his place punctually, but presently appeared with two mice, one of which it placed on its master’s plate, the other on its own.

Peter lost one of his shoes among the cabbages, and the other shoe amongst the potatoes.

I have just made stories to please myself, because I never grew up.

The place is changed now, and many familiar faces are gone, but the greatest change is myself.

Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.

So much perfection argues rottenness somewhere.

I hold that a strongly marked personality can influence descendants for generations.

Thank goodness my education was neglected.

What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood?

I am worn to a raveling.

Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.

It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is ‘soporific’.

My first acting job happened by accident when I was really young.

I believe that it is this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that it is the hope of attaining this quality that inspires the filmmaker to make his film in the first place.

When there is a crisis, the first thing that gets damaged and gets harmed is democracy.

Living every moment as if it was our first and last is a genuine life of gratitude, acceptance and wisdom.

Why did the regime put me in prison in the first place? I was put in prison for six years and it has been all illegal.

I certainly love a boogie and once the music starts I’m usually one of the first out there on the dance floor.

The truth is I always loved him. From the first time I saw him he was so great. But that time I was hurt. I might have been selfish but I was so hurt. I was afraid I would feel more pain.

It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.