I use my friends rather as giglamps : There's another field I see: by your light. Over there's a hill. I widen my landscape.

Yes, our old age is not going to be sunny orchard drowse. By shutting down the fire curtain, though, I find I can live in the moment; which is good; why yield a moment to regret or envy or worry? Why indeed? (24 December 1940)

The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.

I want to raise up the magic world all round me and live strongly and quietly there.

What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! (...) I think I could happily live here & read forever.

This idea struck me: the army is the body : I am the brain. Thinking is my fighting. (15 May 1940)

A wet day. And I am glad of the rain, because I have talked too much.

At the moment I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

Habits gradually change the face of ones life as time changes one's physical face;& one does not know it.