It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters.

It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children

I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.

The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself. All who have passed the age of thirty are joyless grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance and staying alive without, so far as the child can see, having anything to live for. Only child life is real life.

One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.