“Was there anything quite so painful, so fraught with the possibilities of hurt, as gift giving within a family?”

“Soon would come the night in which there was no more work not the work of the hands, nor the work of the mind, nor the work of the heart.”

“Still, for all that, her life had lacked passion. The demons had never come for her.”

“I think good conversation is really the best form of sex.”

“Were archaeologists really such a sex-starved lot as all that? Did pigs really sweat?”

“Education teaches children to lose interest in what matters most to them.”

“And the turtles, of course...all the turtles are free, as turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.”

“The more we respect other creatures, the more respect our humanity will get!”

“She said that that was the disadvantage of bringing creatures into the house: one grew used to them, and then, one had the upset of their loss.”

“It is incredible what a pronounced hero can get away with and what can be accredited to him. There were no inconvenient questions asked of Robin because everyone preferred to believe that heroes de...”

“Since Genesis 3 we have been addicted to setting our sights on something, someone, smaller than Jesus.”

“That was originally what I had loved him for: that at a period when our native land was nude and crude and provincial, when the famous 'atmosphere' it is supposed to lack was not even missed, when ...”

“There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.”

“Oblivion, she thought. That was the world she lived in. It was what they should name some countries, towns, and places.”

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'Quite often men are fools.”