“It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.”

“For a dyed-in-the-wool author nothing is as dead as a book once it is written ... she is rather like a cat whose kittens have grown up. While they were a-growing she was passionately interested in them but now they seem hardly to belong to her - and probably she is involved with another batch of kittens as I am involved with other writing.”

“A garden isn't meant to be useful. It's for joy.”

“When you learn to read you will be born again...and you will never be quite so alone again.”

“In good company your thoughts run, in solitude your thought is still; it goes deeper and makes for itself a deeper groove, delves. Delve meansa 'dig with a spade'; it means hard work. In talk your mind can be stretched, widened, exhilarated to heights but it cannot be deepened; you have to deepen it yourself. It needs sturdiness. You will be lonely, you will be depressed; you must expect it; if you were training your body it would ache and be tired. It is worth it. There is a Hindu proverb which says: 'You only grow when you are alone'.”

“It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.”

“...and as she stood on the Ashford platform waiting for the small train to come in, she seemed already separated from the people around her. Tomorrow I shall not be among you anymore; not of you but mysteriously still with you, thought Philippa. As Lady Abbess of Brede had said, "People think we renounce the world. We don't. We renounce its ways but we are still very much in it and it is very much in us.”

“The human heartIs unknowable.But in my birthplaceThe flowers still smellThe same as always.”

“I know now it is children who accept life”