She dismissed the fantasy immediately; love was the preserve of the young, or of demented optimists, and she was a middle-aged rationalist.

Simply repeating customs and adopting past traditions are the preserves of the lazy and the unimaginative.

Trelawney is just a film set for our dreams and fantasies. Take away the script, the razzamatazz, the people or prestige, the power or money, and it’s just bricks and mortar.

The mundanity of those chores, the repetition, acts as a kind of meditation. I start each day with a series of numbers and questions written on a piece of paper, put them in my pocket and get on with the business of farming. By mid morning the answers are clear.

After a while they came through a clearing and emerged in a deep cleft of a valley whose high banks were covered in wild flowers and grasses. Blaze gasped; it was enchanting. There was an open pasture planted with mature oaks and beech trees and through the middle a meandering river with sheep grazing on one side, cattle on the other. Occasionally there was a break in the ribbon of green made by a drystone wall, a rambling hedge or a small copse, but otherwise the valley seemed endless.

Can you miss someone you haven’t seen for longer than you knew them? Maybe we rue the time not the person.

You have an opportunity to help someone, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life,” Alvira continued, “it’s better to be needed than wanted. Desire and romantic love pass, leaving little trace. But dependency has an afterglow, the satisfaction of having done something good.

One of the most unfair things about capitalism is that once you’ve made a lot of money, it becomes easier to make more: the wealthy don’t have to do a lot.

Capriciousness is the preserve of the old. So marvelous to be able to let random thoughts pour from the mind to the tongue without pause or retribution.

History is like waves on a seashore: tides come and go but nothing really changes.