“There was a wonderful atmosphere of gentle age, a smell of flowers and beeswax, sweet yet faintly sour and musty; a smell that makes you feel very tender towards the past.”

“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”

“I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring.”

“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”

“When I imagine changing places with her I get the feeling I do on finishing a novel with a brick-wall happy ending---I mean the kind of ending when you never think any more about the characters.”

“When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting”

“No, that was my privilege.”

“That little glow of comfort lasted me right through the evening but was gone when I woke up next morning. Wakings are the worst times--almost before my eyes are open a great weight seems to roll on to my heart.”

“...[P]erhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return---that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness.”

“Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.”

“And who says you always have to understand things? You can like them without understanding them -- like 'em better sometimes.”