Quotes from Ruskin Bond

They were not in a hurry to get anywhere. They had everywhere to go and they could take their own time going there, and there was no one to hurry them on.

There is a great affinity between trees and men. We grow at much the same pace, if we are not hurt or starved or cut down. In our youth we are resplendent creatures, and in our declining years we stoop a little, we remember, we stretch our brittle limbs in the sun, and then, with a sigh, we shed our last leaves.

That first day at school, maybe an agonising parting from your parents. The face of a loved one lost. A pullover knitted by your granny. A favourite toy. A doll, perhaps. A book of rhymes, tattered and torn. Someone who gave you a flower, a kiss on the forehead. To the end of your days you will carry that kiss with you. And may it protect you from all harm.

Happy the cicadas, for they have voiceless wives!' To which I would respond by saying: 'Pity the female cicadas, for they have singing husbands!

Our skin, I thought, is like the leaf of a tree, young and green and shiny; then it gets darker and heavier, sometimes spotted with disease, sometimes eaten away; then fading, yellow and red, then falling, crumbling into dust or feeding the flames of fire.

Evil is an aberration of personality. Often ingrained in the mind at birth.

The world seems crowded with unfinished lives.

When I have sung my songs to you, I'll sing no more,' goes the old ballad. But for one faithful listener, Nelson Eddy is still singing.

Women in love can be more reckless than men!

There is much to celebrate – just being alive, to begin with.

Happiness is a mysterious thing to be found between too little and too much.

Shake off that fit of depression. Go for a walk. Look at the busy people on the street, in the shops, in the fields. Are they depressed? They don't have time for it.

In due course, life returned to normal, as it always does in India, post earthquakes, cyclones, riots, epidemics and cricket controversies. Apathy, or lethargy, or a combination of the two, soon casts a spell over everything and the most traumatic events are quickly forgotten.

No, thanks,' I said. 'I live in a tiny flat in Delhi. No room for flowers.' 'A world without flowers,' he shook his head. 'That's what it's coming to.

Not Sushila.' 'Not Sushila.

I have never understood the misguided attitude of most people to heavy, fleshy women, who are generally considered ugly. Surely, in the generous abundance of their flesh, their broad dips and curves and gradual inclines - bodies where the questing lover may wander freely and unhindered; where he can stop and rest, or turn a corner and discover some hidden recess - surely these magnificent women have a marked superiority over those of a more conventional build? They have so much more to offer!

Adventure is when a child crawls across the floor, grabs the leg of a chair, and stands up for the first time.

INSTEAD OF having brothers and sisters to grow up with in India, I had as my companions an odd assortment of pets, which included a monkey, a tortoise, a python and a Great Indian Hornbill.

Happiness can be as elusive as a small fish darting away in a mountain stream.

there were books and authors to be discovered. A lifetime of reading lay ahead. Old books, new books, classics, thrillers, stories short and tall, travelogues, histories, biographies, comedies, comic strips, poems, memories, fantasies, fables…The adventure would end only when the lights went out for ever.

Once You Have Lived with the Mountains' it is not easy to live elsewhere. I longed to return to the hills and live in a place with windows facing beautiful views. That is what I explore in 'Best of All Windows'. For a room without a view is hardly a living place—merely a place of transit.

Now that I was living closer to nature, I realized that this was the real world, very different from the man-made world of automobiles, computers and skyscrapers. Man was a god of sorts in his own sphere, but on a lovely mountainside he is no more important than an ant—and not half as industrious!

Winding its way towards the plains. And the land stretched out before me, and the years fell away, And I was a boy again, And the friends of my youth were there beside me, And nothing had changed. 'Remember the Old Road

Never mind,' said Mr Kishore. 'If you're tired, I know just the thing for you—a nice cup of tea.' I think it was Malcolm Muggeridge who said that the only real Englishmen left in the world were to be found in India.