“It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia, lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.”

“When women are angry at men, they call them heartless. When men are angry at women, they call them crazy.”

“My Aunt Agatha, for instance, is tall and thin and looks rather like a vulture in the Gobi desert, while Aunt Dahlia is short and solid, like a scrum half in the game of Rugby football. In disposition, too, they differ widely. Aunt Agatha is cold and haughty, though presumably unbending a bit when conducting human sacrifices at the time of the full moon, as she is widely rumoured to do, and her attitude towards me has always been that of an austere governess, causing me to feel as if I were six years old and she had just caught me stealing jam from the jam cupboard: whereas Aunt Dahlia is as jovial and bonhomous as a dame in a Christmas pantomime.”

“There came from without the hoof-beats of a galloping relative and Aunt Dahlia whizzed in.”

“The modern young man,' said Aunt Dahlia, 'is a congenital idiot and wants a nurse to lead him by the hand and some strong attendant to kick him regularly at intervals of a quarter of an hour.”

“Don't wake up a woman in love. Let her dream, so that she does not weep when she returns to her bitter reality”

“"Take my camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.”

“How often does a man ruin his disciples by remaining always with them! When men are once trained, it is essential that their leader leave them, for without his absence they cannot develop themselves. Plants always remain small under a big tree.”

“My Aunt Dahlia has a carrying voice… If all other sources of income failed, she could make a good living calling the cattle home across the Sands of Dee.”

“Isn't that what a good story does? It pulls you in and never lets you go.”