“I have seen messed-up people of forty who still seemed salvageable, and children of six or seven who almost surely were not.”

“The people of Hiroshima went to work at once to restore human society in the aftermath of the great atomic flood. They were concerned to salvage their own lives, but in the process they also salvaged the souls of the people who have brought the atomic bomb.”

“We would have broken up except for the children. Who were the children? Well, she and I were.”

“I am still going through an experimental stage. I'm not happy, and I keep scrubbing out and scrubbing out again. I hope this mania will pass... I'm like the children at school; the clean page has to be filled with good writing, and splash – a mess! I'm still making messes and I'm forty years old.”

“Almost all the people who have had most effect on me I seem to have met by chance.”

“Happily, at forty-six I still feel as experimental and on the verge of getting at the truth as ever.”

“I found myself jealous of the people who wrote the books. They were dead and they were still taking up my time. Who did they think they were?”

“The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent's first duty.”

“Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.”

“I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.”