Quotes from Polly Samson

There would be plump artichokes ready for him in the garden, trees heavy with plums, soft roses, the river flowing, and between the crab-Apple trees the hammock hanging like a smile in a landscape as familiar to him as the face of his mother.

How lovely they were, those long summer nights: the words and the silences, the sunsets and the stars.

Julian wouldn't wish for his daughter to be anything other than extraordinary: for her, kingdoms would be renounced, incurable diseases cured, world records broken.

Leonard is saying, 'Whenever I hear that a guy writes poetry I feel close to him. You know, I understand the folly.

The others sleep right through the bells and the donkeys and the workmen hammering; if left to them our ice would be a puddle so it's as well I'm a lark.

The early morning is mine and I'm glad of it. Back home, I bumble about in my vest and shorts, tipping water from the icebox into a bucket to swab the floor, pushing the new block into place. I boil coffee on the Primus and sing to myself as I start clearing away last night's dinner things, carefully observing our systems for the conservation of water.

Though not boastful, Leonard gives off an unmistakable air of a man who has always been there before you. He possesses that old-soul thing of wisdom more ancient than his body and his face.

We were heady with ideals, drunk with hopes of our languorous lope into a future that had learnt from its past.

When people get what they want, they haven't a clue what to do with it.