You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else, but you can't make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. [...] Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish (...) it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.

It's lovely to know the world can't interfere with the inside of your head.

People arrived and there was eating, drinking, dancing and misunderstandings between all the couples, married and unmarried. FrankSchwake wouldn’t talk to his wife, Jean. Jim Collins quarreled in a corner with his wife, Sheila. There was still a coolness between Alberta and me and between Brian and Joyce. Other couples were affected and there were islands of tension all over the apartment. The night would have been ruined except for the way we all united against an outside danger.

When I asked her about her days in Brooklyn she doled out scraps and then went silent. What was the use? The past is the past and it’s dangerous to go back.

She made tea in a teapot and couldn’t help sniffing at the idea of tea bags. I told her tea bags were just a convenience for people with busy lives and she said no one is so busy they can’t take time to make a decent cup of teaand if you are that busy you don’t deserve a decent cup of tea for what is it all about anyway? Are we put into this world to be busy or to chat over a nice cup of tea?