Her father’s shadow looked sadly down at her. “You can never forget what you do in a war, September my love. No one can. You won’t forget your war either.

That's Venus, September thought. She was the goddess of love. It's nice that love comes on first thing in the evening, and goes out last in the morning. Love keeps the light on all night.

This is what comes of having a heart, even a very small and young one. It causes no end of trouble, and that’s the truth.

September had never been betrayed before. She did not even know what to call the feeling in her chest, so bitter and sour. Poor child. There is always a first time, and it is never the last time.

A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.

Perhaps memory is a thing that everyone involved has to work at, like stitching up a big quilt out of everything that ever happened to you.

You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.

Why should I care about you first kiss, ' he said. 'You can kiss anyone you like. But sometimes if you wanted to kiss me, that would be all right, too.

I am the best author of my life.

For a knowledge of intimacy, localization in the spaces of our intimacy is more urgent than determination of dates.

We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

I pitch with emotion. I don't know any other way.

Did the Prime Minister have some sort of grudge against you by sending this publicity crazed person into your Department?

They looked at the paper and saw nothing in those curving lines, but they knew and understood everything, for their geography was in their blood and they felt biologically their picture of the world.

The soul of the Christian religion is reverence.

The greater the novel, the more it is apt to embody the special, non-replicable properties of the written medium.

Property is a nuisance.

Peace purchased at the cost of any part of our national integrity is fit only for slaves, and even when purchased for such a price it is a delusion, for it cannot last.