A priest could have no anguish, he’d given up happiness, his fixed life moving in the calm of certainty into its end, cursed by no earthly love or longing, all had been chosen years before.

As looking down from great heights brings the urge to fall and end the terror of falling, so his very watching put pressure on them to make a slip as they dried and stacked the plates and cups.

Cool, calm and collected, the three seas of wisdom and success.

I’d much prefer to write more quickly.

I mean I think that’s a fact and I think that we had a very peculiar type of Catholic Church here in that it was a fortress Church.

They’d listen silenty, with grave faces: but once they’d turn to each other they’d smile cruelly. He couldn’t have it both ways. He’d put himself outside and outside they’d make him stay. Neither brutality nor complaining could force a way in.

That’s one thing can’t be bought is brains. Only God can give brains. And they don’t come off the wind either.

I’ve never written anything that hasn’t been in my mind for a long time – seven or eight years.

The days were quiet. They did not feel particularly quiet or happy but through them ran the sense, like an underground river, that there would come a time when these days would be looked back on as happiness, all that life could give of contentment and peace.

Nothing ever holds together unless it is mixed with some of one’s own blood.